EAGLES blogger SAM ROSS believes former Seagulls striker Glenn Murray will prove to be the key man in Saturday’s feisty encounter between Crystal Palace and Brighton at Selhurst Park.

LAST night’s 0-0 draw at Hull was the first time the Eagles have failed to score in any game this season.

For me it was no coincidence Glenn Murray was absent from the team through suspension.

The Palace frontman has netted 15 times in the league so far this season and looks all set to steal the show in one of the biggest games of the season for Palace fans, at home to Brighton this Saturday.

Murray would probably be the first person to admit he wasn’t at his sharpest last season and while he was a decent hold up player, the striker’s role is to score, something he wasn’t doing regularly enough.

The highlight for Murray last season, or rather Palace’s best memory of the 29-year-old, was his last minute strike to round off a remarkable comeback against the Seagulls as the Eagles became the first club to win at the Amex Stadium.

That result will be almost impossible for Eagles fans to top but Murray is clearly relishing playing against his former club and I think it will prove to be his best game for Palace so far in his career.

He is definitely a big game player, as his goal at Old Trafford last year proved, and while Palace will forever thank him for the memorable ‘FFS Murray’ moment, I believe Brighton fans will be cursing even more come Saturday evening.

If the threat of Murray isn’t daunting enough for Brighton, Wilfried Zaha will also be looking to prove Gus Poyet wrong when he claimed the English youngster wasn’t as good as Will Buckley, the Rochdale reared winger who has scored five goals for Brighton this season.

Zaha’s performance this Saturday could prove how much his psychological approach to the game has improved in the last year by simply letting his pure talent prove Poyet wrong.

Alternatively the Brighton manager’s comments, combined with the players’ undoubted wind-up antics during the match, seemingly the only way to stop him at the minute, could ultimately ruin Zaha’s performance.

Palace saw their unbeaten run come to an end on Saturday at Leeds and while they failed to score for the first time in the season on Tuesday night at Hull, it was also the fourth time this month Julian Speroni has kept a clean sheet.

The Brighton game is just as much about the Argentinean stopper as it is Zaha and Murray.

Speroni has dealt with a lot at Palace and impressively stuck through it all.

You only have to watch his reaction at big derby wins, just like at Charlton, to see how much the club he plays for means to him, something so rare in the game today.

Whatever the result, there is set to be an intense and incredible atmosphere which hopefully transcends onto the pitch as a high tempo and end-to-end game.

Roll on Saturday.

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