3 Arsenal players who must start against Crystal Palace tonight

Santi Cazorla

Whisper it quietly, but the diminutive Spaniard is finally hitting the sort of form he showed last season, having notched four goals in his last three games for the club.

Cazorla Goals Scored – PL 2013/14

Cazorla was central to the Gunners’s push for the top four last season but suffered a dip from his usually exemplary standards at the start of the current campaign and before his recent goalscoring splurge, featuring a brace against Fulham before strikes against Coventry and Southampton respectively, he had scored just once.

The playmaker has just two assists to his name this season and is struggling to replicate his role as Arsenal’s creator-in-chief from last year, having accumulated 11 in his debut season.

Of course that burden has been lifted from his shoulders with the arrival of Mesut Özil, but Cazorla finally looks to be finding his groove once more.

He will hope to maintain that against Palace at the weekend, having scored once again on the south coast to preserve his thirst for goals. His performance against Southampton, like the majority of the team, wasn’t the best but it hardly mattered with his goalscoring contribution crucial in gaining Arsenal a scarcely-deserved result.

Cazorla Pass Map vs Southampton (A) – PL 2013/14

His 100% shooting accuracy was encouraging but no crosses from three completed, just three out of seven take ons and a staggeringly low 78% passing accuracy suggest Cazorla has even more to offer against Palace.