'With great fixture congestion comes opportunity'

Four matches into an eight-game December, and Crystal Palace can claim four victories, three actual ones and one "Graham Potter" xG win over Manchester City, which naturally doesn't count.

Despite the brutality of a 3-0 home defeat, the team can take plenty of positives, even if they didn't take their respective chances. It can be deemed as a bit of turbulence on their journey, rather than the literal plane that didn't take off last Thursday evening in Dublin.

However, the casualties of such a congested schedule are mounting. Daniel Munoz has joined the knee-injury-surgery support group, while the team will hope the hamstring injury suffered by Daichi Kamada sees a quick recovery. Ismaila Sarr did make a sharp return, though mainly to Senegal's benefit, as he joins them for Afcon.

Thursday's game against the newly crowned Finnish champions KuPS, followed by Leeds United 48 hours later, is the most difficult pair of fixtures for Oliver Glasner to manage logistically. Twice publicly, he has stated that he plans to make 11 changes between matches. Whether that is possible, given the squad's constraints, remains to be seen.

The KuPS game itself is a must-win fixture to achieve a top-eight finish in the Conference League, and Glasner has been reluctant to grant academy players minutes as a form of charity. Players have had to earn that opportunity.

The Shelbourne match gave a debut to 17-year-old forward Benji Casey, who leapfrogged players in older age brackets, to travel with the senior squad. Casey, by reputation, even at a young age, fits the Justin Devenny or Rio Cardines prototype – exhibiting professionalism and maturity in his football. That is likely to ingratiate any player, junior or senior, with this manager and staff.

With great fixture congestion certainly comes opportunity. It is up to the players on the fringes to grasp it on Thursday evening.

Find more from Alex Pewter at FYP podcast