Manchester City 3-0 Crystal Palace: City cruise past Palace in second gear at the Etihad, closing the gap at the top of the Premier League to two points.
Man City breezed past Crystal Palace (Image: Martin Rickett/PA Wire)
Josep Guardiola took a gamble and won to keep alive Manchester City’s fading hopes of beating Arsenal for the title. Guardiola has opted to rest a number of his superstars ahead of the game against Crystal Palace, which City must win.
And he saw Phil Foden, Omar Marmouche and Sabinho come out of the cold to inspire a comfortable win that turned the heat back on Mikel Arteta’s league leaders.
After Antoine Semenyo’s opener, Foden scored two goals, including one for Marmouche, helping City close the gap at the top of the table to just two points.
Guardiola named a team that has given up hope of catching Arsenal in the title race. With the FA Cup final against Chelsea in mind, Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki were left on the bench.
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Mikel Arteta must have been dancing with joy in front of his TV screen at home. It was a bold decision by Coach Guardiola, considering that a win here would put pressure back on the league leaders.
Palace, meanwhile, had other priorities, with the Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano, which manager Oliver Glasner hoped to cap off with a second trophy.
However, this remained a huge event for the home team, even though thoughts drifted to other games. If Arsenal slip in the home straight, City will have a chance to hit the post.
And no matter what team Guardiola sent out, it would have been enough to beat Palace. However, Palace made a bright start that shook their rivals. Jean-Philippe Mateta thought he had scored within two minutes, but his goal was ruled out for offside during the build-up.
Palace’s sharp break saw Yeremy Pino fire a shot wide of the target, but Chaos Richards headed it home. The only lackluster opening attack for City was Marc Guehi’s atrocious shot, which was bad enough to lead to a throw-in.
Abdukkodir Kusanov also tried his luck, but could only fire flak into the stands. Rayan Eyt-Nouri then fired a shot into the side netting. City needed a magical moment to lift their team and it came from Foden in the 32nd minute.
It looked as if nothing had happened when Matheus Nunez passed him, but Foden hit Semenyo with a nice backheel and a diagonal strike into the bottom corner saw the Ghanaian beat Dean Henderson.
Tyrick Mitchell could have scored an equalizer within 60 seconds, but was denied by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Pep’s gamble paid off (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Marmouche should have doubled City’s advantage at the other end, but he took too long to decide what to do and allowed Marmouche to be stripped by Maxence Lacroix.
But Marmouche corrected himself moments later, receiving a pass from Foden and spinning his shot past a helpless Henderson. Guardiola clenched his fists in joy. He knew the match was over as a contest.
He also knew there was no cost to keeping around £400 million worth of talent on the sidelines.
The question that remained for City was how much they could increase their goal difference, but there was little hope of closing the gap by the end of the season.
But Henderson made a spectacular save to deny Josko Gvardiol and Bernardo Silva curled his shot wide. Coach Glasner made three substitutions in an effort to inject some energy into the visitors.
But Palace remained lackluster and City didn’t need to move up from second gear until the final whistle.
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