Fulham v Crystal Palace prediction: Craven Cottage set for goals as both sides search for first win

Two games into the season and there is already a faint whiff of crisis at both ends of the Fulham Road.

Fulham lost 3-2 at home to Chelsea and then went down 1-0 at Sunderland, a start that has the Craven Cottage faithful muttering rather than singing.

Crystal Palace's opening fortnight has been worse still, beaten 2-0 at Everton before being taken apart 4-1 at home by Manchester City.

Something has to give when two sides with zero points and leaking defences meet, and if you like your football open, this is the fixture to circle.

Fulham's numbers from their two matches so far tell a story of a team that can create but cannot keep the door shut. They are averaging 12.5 shots and 1.14 expected goals a game, backed up by an average of 60.5% possession, which points to a side comfortable enough on the ball. The trouble comes at the other end, where they have shipped an average of two goals a game and an expected goals against figure of 2.13, numbers that explain why they have failed to register a single clean sheet in either outing.

The Chelsea defeat was the more damaging of the two, a 3-2 home loss that saw Fulham score twice themselves but still come away with nothing. Losing at home when you have found the net twice is not just bad form, it is a soft-centre problem that Crystal Palace, there to be got at defensively themselves, might just be able to exploit if the visitors carry any threat of their own.

Crystal Palace's start has been grimmer on the eye. A 4-1 home defeat to Manchester City followed a 2-0 loss at Everton, leaving them with one goal scored and six conceded from their two games, an average of 0.5 for and three against per match.

Possession has been hard to come by too, with the visitors averaging just 43% of the ball across those two matches, and they have failed to score in one of the two already. There is early pressure building on a Palace side that supporters had hoped might kick on from recent seasons, and a third defeat on the spin at Craven Cottage would sharpen that scrutiny considerably.

Neither side arrives with anything to shout about on the form charts, Fulham losing at home to Chelsea before falling at Sunderland, Palace beaten at Everton and then thumped by Manchester City at Selhurst Park. Fulham's underlying numbers, an average of 1.14 expected goals for against 2.13 against, suggest a team that is at least competitive going forward even if the defensive picture is alarming. Palace's expected goals split, 1.31 for against 1.67 against, is tighter on paper than the actual scorelines suggest, which could be telling if you fancy this to be closer than the two heavy recent defeats imply.

Both sides sit at the bottom end of the early Premier League picture with nothing to show from their opening two fixtures, no wins, no draws, and two defeats apiece. Fulham's goal difference of -2 is the healthier of the two, with Crystal Palace's -5 already the more concerning of the pair given how comfortably Manchester City took them apart at home.

It is only round three, so nobody's season is defined yet, but a third straight defeat for either side would start to feel less like a slow start and more like a pattern. For Fulham, a home win would settle nerves after that Chelsea collapse. For Palace, back-to-back league defeats without scoring more than once would put an uncomfortable early spotlight on a squad many expected to kick on this season.

Fulham and Crystal Palace have become familiar top-flight opponents since Palace's return to the Premier League, meeting regularly as two of west and south London's mid-table regulars. Both clubs know this fixture rarely settles into a cagey stalemate, given how often each side's matches this season alone have produced goals at both ends.

With Fulham having found the net in every game so far and Palace only drawing a blank once in their two outings, the pattern of open, end-to-end football looks more likely to continue than break here. Given the defensive frailties both sides have shown early on, a repeat of that trend, goals for both teams and over 2.5 in the match, looks the shrewder read of this fixture than backing either side to shut up shop.

The gap that jumps out is on the ball. Fulham have been averaging 60.5% possession compared to Palace's 43%, a split of almost twenty points that suggests the home side should dictate large spells of Saturday's game.

The corners numbers back that up further, Fulham averaging five won a game to Palace's solitary corner, evidence of just how often the visitors have been pinned in their own half early this season. If Fulham can turn that territorial control into more of the 12.5 shots a game they are already managing, Palace's defence, already leaking three goals a match on average, could be in for another uncomfortable afternoon.

Expect Fulham to stick largely with the personnel who started against Chelsea, with the same front-footed approach that produced two goals even in defeat. Palace's head coach faces some harder calls after City were allowed too much room in behind, and a reshuffle at the back would not be a surprise.

Fulham: Leno; Tete, Andersen, Bassey, Robinson; Berge, Cairney; Iwobi, Smith Rowe, Sessegnon; Muniz.

Crystal Palace: Henderson; Richards, Canvot, Riad; Mitchell, Wharton, Lerma, Munoz; Sarr, Mateta, Nketiah.

Kick-off at Craven Cottage is 15:00 BST on Saturday 5 September 2026. This one falls inside the UK's Saturday 3pm blackout, so it is not being shown live on TV or streaming anywhere in the UK. Your best bets for following along are the goals and reaction on Match of the Day later that evening, or our live blog for updates as they happen.

The value here sits in the goals markets rather than the result itself, with both sides shipping and scoring at a rate that points firmly towards an open game. Fulham's home platform, built on plenty of the ball and a stack of corners won, gives them the edge in the correct score and goalscorer markets, but Palace's early-season habit of conceding freely means backing under the odds here would be swimming against the tide of the data.