Where Crystal Palace's Premier League relegation battle will be won or lost as Sam Allardyce plots survival

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Tom Dutton4 January 2017

The task facing Sam Allardyce at Crystal Palace was brought into sharp focus on Tuesday night as Swansea completed a Premier League double over his struggling side to haul themselves off the bottom.

Wilfried Zaha's late acrobatic strike cancelled out Alfie Mawson's first-half header, but the Palace defence was then blown open by Leroy Fer's chipped through ball and Angel Rangel rolled in the winner to snatch the points.

It means Allardyce has picked up just one point from his opening three games as Palace boss, his worst return following appointment to a Premier League job.

"Watching Premier League football this year, the top six are so much better than last year so it's always hard to pick up points against them," said the Palace boss after defeat to Arsenal on New Year's Day.

He added: "We're going to survive by beating teams in the bottom half."

But the ease with which the Swans picked apart Palace in the opening 45 minutes in particular was alarming and underlined that Allardyce would be foolish to be complacent.

Indeed, escaping the drop with Palace has been billed as one of the easiest jobs to date for a man well-drilled in steering Premier clubs clear of the relegation zone.

But Swansea have won just four matches this season and 50 per cent of those victories have come against the Eagles, who are now perched just one point above the drop zone.

"(This is proving) a bigger challenge, after three games, than I expected," Allardyce conceded after the 2-1 defeat to Swansea.

Zaha's performance was one of few positives for the Palace boss, while subsititutes Bakary Sako and Fraizer Campbell injected life into the side as Allardyce sacrificed more than £40m worth of talent removing Andros Townsend and Christian Benteke.

Both Zaha and Sako will now depart for the Africa Cup of Nations in another hammer blow for the Palace boss, but the fixture list at least offers the Eagles some respite.

In Pictures | Crystal Palace vs Swansea | 03/01/2017

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If Allardyce's assertion that Palace will escape the clutches of relegation playing against sides in and around them rings true, the next two months will be key.

Not until March March 11 when Tottenham travel to Selhurst Park do Palace play a team currently in the top six and home games against Sunderland and Middlesbrough headline a kind February programme.

Scroll through our gallery at the top of the article to see where Palace's fight against relegation will be won or lost

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