Crystal Palace hopeful on James McArthur as injury bug starts to clear

Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew is hopeful James McArthur will play again this season as his squad begins to show a timely return to full health.

The Scotland midfielder was hurt against Bournemouth last weekend, and initially expected to miss the rest of the season, but his ankle ligament injury does not need surgery.

Although Pardew is not certain, he is hopeful McArthur will be back for the closing stages of the Premier League campaign, while a handful of other players are set to boost his options over the coming weeks after a run of injuries that has seen the likes of young midfielder Hiram Boateng thrown into the first-team.

"It's always a boost for a professional not to go under the knife," Pardew said of McArthur.

"The surgeon was quite happy that it should heal itself, and there's a timeline to that of course. He could be back before the end of the season. That's huge. We've had a terrible run of injuries so hopefully that's the last one."

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Watford are Palace's next opponents on Saturday at Selhurst Park, when Pardew could have a couple more forward options at his disposal, with two more not far away from returning.

Dwight Gayle has been out since the start of December with a hamstring injury and Connor Wickham missed their last three games through suspension, one meted out retrospectively after a clash with Tottenham's Jan Vertonghen last month.

Palace's injury problems have shown themselves in their recent results, with just one point coming from their last six games putting them bottom of the form table.

"We have Dwight hopefully available for this game - he's trained so far this week - so fingers crossed for him," Pardew added.

"Connor's ban is finished so that's a little better for us. He was fined heavily of course, because it's become uncharacteristic of one of our players to do something like that.

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"I genuinely think he didn't intend to catch him where he did. I thought he moved his arm to get him off him, because he was holding him. That's something we experience at this club. We are the best at set-plays in the division, so we get a lot of holding, so perhaps it was a bit of frustration.

"But the even better news comes next week when [Yannick] Bolasie and [Bakary] Sako come back. They're both running and that's better for us offensively."

Pardew also confirmed he had heard nothing about reports that Palace captain Mile Jedinak was among the players being talked about as a possible target for big-spending Chinese clubs before the end of their transfer window on February 26.

He added: "I'm aware of nothing about Jedinak to China. There seems to be a bit of an agenda at the moment. The Chinese window is still open so we'll probably get lots of players linked to Chinese clubs.

"It's now a significant market now and it will impact on Premier League clubs, so we shouldn't take it lightly. We need to keep our eye on it.

"I think the agents are quite enjoying it yes, as I understand. I'm sure they'll be giving their tremendous insight and knowledge of our game into the Chinese market."