Crystal Palace unquestionably deserved this, earning their own piece of the continued downfall of Manchester City.
Twice ahead, they weathered Storm Darragh and City’s pressure to draw 2-2.
In this fixture last season, Jean-Philippe Mateta had fired Palace into a fourth-minute lead. They played brave football but were just a touch too open at the back and ultimately beaten 4-2.
Here were altogether different circumstances. Then, in April, City were on the march to a record-breaking fourth Premier League title in a row, the unmovable juggernaut of English football.
Now? They came into the game trailing leaders Liverpool by nine points, and their only reliable goalscorer had stopped scoring. If they had been beaten here, they would have become the first top-flight champions to lose six straight away games since they themselves did so all the way back in the 1968/69 season.
And so despite Palace’s lowly league position of 17th coming into this match, it felt fairly unremarkable when Daniel Munoz controlled Will Hughes’s stunning pass and hammered past Stefan Ortega to give Palace a brand-new fourth-minute lead in this fixture. After no goals in his first 31 outings for Palace, their right wing-back has two in his last three.
Palace deployed a sensible pressing strategy, Ismaila Sarr and Eberechi Eze getting out to City’s defenders quickly but picking their moments selectively, not zapping themselves of all energy.
Sarr, Eze and Mateta countered rapidly whenever they pinched the ball, but Pep Guardiola’s side did threaten. Ilkay Gundogan cracked a gorgeous left-footed volley off the post. Erling Haaland went through on goal only to strike against Dean Henderson’s face.
But Haaland’s rotten luck in front of goal in recent weeks soon turned. Henderson came out into no-man’s-land, and Haaland simply edged above Marc Guehi to nod Matheus Nunes’s cross over the stranded goalkeeper and in. It was a gift from Palace, against the run of play.
One change (Jefferson Lerma for Cheick Doucoure) in the Eagles’ line-up from that which downed Ipswich for a second league win of the season on Tuesday told of their satisfaction that night but also Glasner’s now questionable decision to head into the season with a shrunk squad. Does he regret that decision now? “Absolutely not,” the Austrian said on Friday. “I think it was completely the right decision.”
Just this.#CPFC // #CRYMCI pic.twitter.com/cfDzdwSWZi
— Crystal Palace F.C. (@CPFC) December 7, 2024
Palace could be busy in January, and that says as much as anything about how the first half of this season has gone, but against the riches of City, the injury-hit Eagles stood up well.
Maxence Lacroix more than stood up; he leapt up, above Kyle Walker as though he wasn’t there, to head home his first Palace goal. Fitting that it should come from Will Hughes’s corner — a second assist of the afternoon for him — and a corner which Hughes himself had won. More fashionable midfielders exist, but he should have been paid commission for the shift he put in at Selhurst Park.
City’s resolve has been tested in recent weeks and not always passed, but it was nothing but sheer quality that saw Rico Lewis clinically finish off a sweeping move by the visitors — the visitors back level again.
That edge-of-the-box pressure from City followed, Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan trying to find the all-important pass that would secure City their third goal.
Instead, Lewis went in fiercely on Trevoh Chalobah and was shown a second yellow card. It released all of City’s pressure like a leaky valve. Palace, up to 16th, got their point.
