Crystal Palace produced a stunning comeback to draw 2-2 against Leicester City on Saturday.
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Leicester City manager Craig Shakespeare will wait until the last minute before deciding whether to gamble on Wes Morgan’s fitness in Tuesday’s decisive Champions League showdown with Atletico Madrid.
The draw moved Palace seven points clear of third from bottom Swansea, leaving manager Sam Allardyce delighted.
Yohan Benalouane has played well in the past six games, including the first leg against Diego Simeone’s side, but with Robert Huth suspended for the match on Tuesday night the importance of Morgan’s return has heightened.
Leicester is two points ahead of the London club in 12th place after mounting a feeble defense of its title.
Both in attack and defence, Robert Huth played like a man with something to prove after receiving that costly yellow card at the Vicente Calderon in the first leg, which Leicester lost 1-0.
A raucous atmosphere and a performance of relentless intensity saw Leicester turn a 2-1 deficit against Sevilla into a 3-2 aggregate win in the previous round and left-back Christian Fuchs is relishing trying to make life hard for another La Liga opponent.
“I like him. I really rate him as a player”, said the former Argentina bruiser.
And the Belgium global has since scored against Chelsea, Southampton and Leicester to help Palace move seven points clear of the drop zone.
Shakespeare said: “Wes looked better”.
From there it was all Palace, with Leicester’s best chance coming courtesy of another Fuchs long throw that Ward almost turned into his own net in the 65th minute. “We have to make sure we’re ready and focused for the game”. It’s the last English team standing, but only given about a 3-1 chance of going through with bookmakers while Atletico is the overwhelming favorite. “Of course they have their preferred position but there are players within the squad who can utilise different positions and Daniel is one”.
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Andros Townsend was next to threaten for Palace after a clever throughball from Ward down the right in the closing stages of the first half, but the winger hesitated a second too long to allow Huth to close the gap and block his shot from a narrow angle. Yet Danny Drinkwater’s shot was as close as they came to recovering a lead, with Palace taking some satisfaction in their point. The mental side showed by coming back to get back to 2-2.
