Despite this only hitting in five of eight Palace games, one of those eight games was a game featuring ten in defeat to this opposition (8-2 corner count in favour of Palace) and with the club out of the FA Cup and a likely midtable finish in the Premier League, they can really put all of their eggs into the Conference League basket and I think they will want to lay down a real marker at home here against inferior opposition.

Five of Larnaca’s six league phase games also saw at least eight corners, and all featured between seven and ten, showing a strong level of consistency at both ends of the pitch, which is handy for this selection.

Palace also covered this line by themselves in two league phase games, with ten against KuPS and nine against Shelbourne (as well as seven when hosting Fredrikstad in the qualifying play-off round).

As mentioned above, I expect Oliver Glasner to go fairly strongly here and ask his side to step up their performances as they look to justify their pre-season favouritism for this competition.

After a sluggish Christmas period, performances and results have started to pick back up again, with the impressive attacking form of Ismaila Sarr and Jorgen Strand Larsen being a particularly welcome boost.

Sarr is in especially good nick, with two shots on target in four of his last five starts, and the Palace side as a whole have covered this line in all but one of their home matches so far in this competition.

The anomaly, coincidentally, was in that shock defeat to Larnaca in October, but I think they are a completely different proposition heading into this tie than they were nearly six months ago, and with the ability for Glasner to play all his aces in this one, I’d expect them to pressure Zlatan Alomerovic in the Larnaca goal throughout the whole game.

Unsurprisingly, given we expect Palace to have a good number of shots on target and a fair number of corners in the match, it’s one of their centre-backs that catches the eye to have an effort on goal here.

Across his last ten starts in all competitions, the Frenchman is averaging 0.96 shots per 90 minutes, with at least one in eight of those matches. This includes efforts against both Champions League-calibre teams such as Man United, Chelsea, and Newcastle, as well as the likes of Burnley and last round’s opponents Zrinjski Mostar, demonstrating there is no bias towards the type or strength of opposition that Lacroix tends to have a shot against.

His shot data is stronger than fellow centre-backs Chris Richards and Chadi Riad, suggesting that he (alongside big striker Strand Larsen) will be the primary target from set pieces, which, if the corners flow as they should do, he is likely to get a head (or a boot) on the end of one or two.

After starting the campaign playing as a right back/right wing back, Miramon moved into more of an attacking role in the last couple of games, shuffling between midfield and the right wing.

In those two last Conference League matches, he had two shots against both KF Drita and Hacken, and started on the wing in Larnaca’s 3-0 league win this weekend just gone, scoring the second before being replaced just before the hour mark.

With the Cypriot’s looking to have changed shape in recent weeks from a back three system to more of a 4-2-3-1, and with some key attacking injuries meaning he is likely to remain in this more advanced role and look to exploit the space in behind left wing back Tyrick Mitchell, I think there’s every chance he keeps up his good forward thrust from recent weeks.