Everton travel down to London in what could be a much-needed distraction from their poor league form and hope to secure a first FA Cup Wembley appearance since 2016
And Frank Lampard’s men will be buoyed by their dramatic injury-time winner at home to Newcastle United last night.
But in their way is a Crystal Palace side coming off the back of an impressive 0-0 league draw at home to Man City and will want to improve on a strong debut season for Patrick Viera.
The Cup Runs
Everton have won all three of their FA Cup games this season without the need for penalties defeating Hull City (2-3), Brentford (4-1) and Boreham Wood (2-0) on their way to the quarter final.
The Toffees have had seven different goal scorers in the competition with nine goals scored in their their games.
Crystal Palace have won all three of their FA Cup games this season in 90 minutes, with victories over Millwall (1-2), Hartlepool (2-0) and Stoke City (2-1) earning them their place in the quarter finals.
The Eagles have had five different scorers and have only conceded two goals in the competition, scoring six.
Previous encounters
With the league game at Goodison postponed earlier in the season due to Covid-19 cases, the two sides have only met once so far this season when Palace ran out 3-1 winners at Selhurst Park.
The clash in December saw two goals from Conor Gallagher and one from James Tompkins with Salomón Rondón scoring for Everton.
The result was Palace’s first win against Everton in the league since 2014 and had been winless in the previous 14 encounters between the two sides.
The last meeting between the sides in the FA Cup was in 1972 which Everton won 3-2 after a replay.
Everton’s 48th appearance in the quarter finals sees them become the team with the most quarter final appearances of any side in the competition’s history.
While Palace have only reached the last eight in four of the previous 28 campaigns with their most recent appearance in the 18-19 seasons.
Team News
Everton will still be without long term absentees Yerry Mina and Fabian Delph who are both confirmed to be out for a number of weeks.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin returned to training this week and could feature after appearing against Newcastle last night.
Palace have no new injury concerns with only long-term absentee Nathan Ferguson confirmed to be unavailable, with both Joel Ward and James McArthur returning from spells out.
(Featured image used with creative commons license. Credit – Ben Sutherland )
