Paul Hart has confirmed that Palace will be without five first team players through injury for the visit of Cardiff City on Saturday.
Speaking ahead of the weekend's match against Cardiff City at Selhurst Park, Hart revealed the extent to which injury has plagued his squad.
"Nick Carle has a calf strain and is out for maybe 10-14 days. Paddy McCarthy has had scans this week and we found that the pain he has been suffering on his shoulder is scar tissue. We have to find a way of managing that but he trained yesterday so we have to wait and see how it reacts, but hopefully he is almost there.
"Nathaniel Clyne has a sort of hip injury and he has had scans. He may be back before the end of the season, but again we will have to monitor that. Danny Butterfield has got a hamstring strain and is out for maybe two weeks.
"Alan Lee has a groin strain...[and is out for] maybe a week, maybe more but we will see how it progresses."
Two more players, Claude Davis and Matt Lawrence, will also miss Saturday's game through suspension, which Hart described as "disappointing to say the least", but he confirmed that any young players brought into the squad will take spots on the bench.
"[Any young players will] go on the bench maybe. Apart from the injured players I have just mentioned we will play the experienced players who are fit."
Going into the game, Palace have picked up just two points from the last five games and have slipped into the bottom three. But faced with the question of the threat of relegation, Hart was keen to emphasise that there is still a lot of football to be played.
"We have got to pick up points - that is painfully obvious - but equally there is going to be a lot of twists and turns and other clubs have problems, and results aren't going to go the way we all think they are going to go.
"So we have got to remain strong as a club and I said right at the start it is a very difficult situation. We are equally concerned [about the threat of relegation] and we are trying at all costs to avoid that situation."
