CRYSTAL Palace are a well organised, hard working outfit who have benefited this season from sticking to a simple, yet relatively effective, game-plan.

Perhaps without the individual talent to compete man-for-man with much of the Premiership, Iain Dowie has tended to swamp the midfield with five across the park.

The likes of Wayne Routeledge, Ben Watson, Aki Riihilahti, Michael Hughes and Joonas Kolkka work extremely hard and look to break beyond lone-striker Andy Johnson wherever possible.

But it is Johnson, pictured, who has really made the system work.

With eight goals this season, he is second top-scorer in the league behind only Thierry Henry. Without him, it is difficult to see Palace scoring too many goals.

All of this really presents two main challenges for Steve Wigley's Saints tomorrow.

The first is obviously to stop Johnson, but perhaps the biggest test will be to find ways of breaking down Crystal Palace.

The visitors would leave St Mary's pretty chuffed with a draw, so the onus will very much be on Saints to show far more creativity than they have in recent weeks.

Despite seeing plenty of the ball at Norwich last Saturday, they never really looked too likely to equalise in the final third of the game.

With many of the injuries cleared up and some poor displays last week, Wigley is certainly not short of options tomorrow.

Fabrice Fernandes' place is surely in doubt after his performance against Norwich, while Jason Dodd and Claus Lundekvam have looked uncharacteristically shaky at the back.

In midfield, it will be a difficult judgement to decide whether the central midfield axis of Paul Telfer and Rory Delap is worth sticking with while the likes of Yoann Folly and David Prutton look on.

There is also the option of adopting a different formation to counter Palace's tactics, although Wigley is almost certain to stick with 4-4-2.

Yet within that, there remain plenty of options - and above I have outlined just three that could work.