Mateta and Sarr will carry a real heavy burden for Palace now that Eze has departed to join Arsenal. Palace already weren’t the most expressive side in the final third, but will find it even more laborious to create and take chances now that their star man has left.

Mateta scored the only goal in Palace’s 1-0 win over Fredrikstad in the first leg of their Conference League playoff, and had two shots on target in Palace’s opening game of the season against Chelsea. Mateta had a shot on target when the sides met at the City Ground last season too, and will also now be on penalties for the Eagles.

He averaged 1.12 shots on target per 90 in the Premier League last season, with this total returning 14 goals.

Palace are an excellent defensive side, but did concede in both games against Forest last season and their performance against Fredrikstad midweek would suggest that they may be a little vulnerable when their system opens up - which is what Forest entice their opposition to do so well.

Forest netted three goals against Brentford on the opening day of the season, overachieving their xG of 1.83. Forest are one of the best sides in the Premier League at doing this, Nuno’s side play in a direct style which shows no signs of changing this season.

Forest’s main advantage here will be from a fitness point of view, Palace still have work to do to ensure they qualify for the Conference League proper and won’t be used to the demands of European football, especially with a squad that is quite light at the moment.

Forest scored 32 goals across their 19 away games last season (1.68 per game) with only Arsenal and Liverpool picking up more points on the road.

Murillo contested six duels against Brentford and won five of them, he’s an excellent centre back and i’m slightly surprised that he and his centre back partner, Milenkovic, did not receive more attention from top sides in the summer window.

He’ll be up against Mateta here, who is always a real handful. The striker was fouled once at Stamford Bridge on the opening day of the season and averaged 0.95 fouls won per 90 in the Premier League last term. As Palace are struggling for creativity now that Eze has left, we can expect them to try and be quite direct here, which means a lot of balls sent up to Mateta for him to battle against Murillo and Milenkovic.

Murillo averaged 0.76 fouls committed per 90 in the Premier League last season, so we are looking for this total to rise slightly here, but the presence of Mateta and players like Sarr who is a direct runner should tempt Murillo into making at least one foul.

Morgan Gibbs-White has remained at Nottingham Forest, despite a summer of interest from Tottenham in particular. Gibbs-White is the player that initially sets off Forest on the break, he then often picks up positions around the edge of the box to be available to get a shot away. He had three shots against Brentford on the opening day of the season, with two of these efforts coming from outside the area.

Gibbs White averaged 1.95 shots per 90 in the Premier League last season, with this shot rate returning a goal tally of seven goals for the 25 year old. As Palace do have a tendency to drop into a low to mid block, there should be plenty of space for Gibbs-White to get some shots here.

Chris Wood netted a brace in Nottingham Forest’s opening game of the season against Brentford. He scored with both of his shots on target.

Wood returned a tally of 20 Premier League goals last season, despite only having an xG of 13.4. Of his 68 shots in the Premier League last season, 35 found the target (51%) which is a superb record for a striker at this level, that doesn’t really get many opportunities in front of goal.

He is part of a Forest side that were extremely successful on the road last season with their direct approach, scoring 32 goals across their 19 away matches. This should allow the Forest forward to get into dangerous positions again, and he’s already shown that he doesn’t need a mountain of chances of fall his way to be effective.

Only Elliot Anderson and Ryan Yates (10) picked up more yellow cards for Nottingham Forest last season than Morgan Gibbs-White (9). It’s not that surprising that these three are midfielders, Forest look to shut off the central space as much as they can to force the opposition wide and then burst through central areas with their direct attacks.

Gibbs-White is the first line of this defence and averaged 1.21 fouls committed per 90 last season. He also received a red card last year, he can overstep the line at times.

He was shown a yellow card in this fixture last season, too. He didn’t start the game at the City Ground between the sides, but Elliot Anderson played in his role and was shown a yellow card on that day.

This should be quite a feisty affair between two sides that have been trading blows off the pitch all summer.

The background to this game involves a spat between these two sides over European involvement, as it is, Forest will play in the Europa League this season while Palace are halfway to qualifying for the Conference League, having been demoted from the Europa League due to a violation of multi club ownership rules - a decision that was helped along with the help of Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis.

Even without this background noise, both meetings between the sides last season showed plenty of promise when it comes to cards. There were a huge 11 cards shown in this fixture last season, with Palace receiving three of these cautions. There were also five cards shown in their City Ground clash, with Palace on the end of three cards on that occasion.

I think that this will be quite an intense atmosphere with all the background noise that surrounds this game, which should be further heightened by a tight affair that neither side can really get an edge on, a perfect environment for cards.