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After thrashing Watford 6-0 last week, Pep Guardiola was looking to sustain City’s momentum by hoping to dismantle a dire Crystal Palace team. Crystal Palace are the first team in history to lose their first 5 league games without scoring a single goal. Roy Hodgson’s men were in desperate need of a change of fortune and a match against Manchester City provided that opportunity.
After a tight first half, Leroy Sane broke the deadlock in the 44th minute after a wondrous piece of skill to lob Scott Dann and poke past Wayne Hennessey. Manchester City doubled their lead shortly after the break as Sane squared the ball across for Raheem Sterling to slot in. Sterling scored his 2nd ten minutes later, giving his team a 3-0 lead.
In the 78th minute, Sergio Agüero scored and edged closer to history by becoming only 1 goal behind Manchester City’s all-time leading goalscorer. Fabian Delph put the icing on the cake with a sweet long-range strike in the 88th minute.
The 4-0 win leaves Manchester City at the top of the table, level with Manchester United but clear in terms of goal difference. For Crystal Palace, the defeat leaves them rooted to the bottom of the table with no goal or win in six league games.
Here are the main talking points of the game.
#5 Jeffrey Schlupp: the weak link
Roy Hodgson lined Crystal Palace up in a rigid 4-2-3-1, looking to sure up the midfield and counter down the flanks. That plan could have been perfect if he had the right personnel for the job. He had the perfect target man up front in Christian Benteke, a player who would hold up play and be on the end of crosses.
He had Andros Townsend on the right, a man looking to stretch the City defence at all times and then they had Jeffrey Schlupp. The left-back turned winger was meant to be a pacey outlet who could both defend and attack down that flank, but in the end, he did neither, causing Palace to play with 10 men.
#4 Christian Benteke goes off injured
Just so you understand how big a loss this is, Christian Benteke has started Crystal Palace’s last 42 Premier League games. He’s the talisman of the Eagles and without him, Palace are left bear up front. When he came off in the 71st minute, Hodgson had no legit striker options on the bench. Instead, he had to bring on Bakary Sako to fill the void.
Besides Benteke, Crystal Palace only have two other strikers at the club. Connor Wickham is one of them but he’s out injured with an ACL injury that rules him out for an indefinite length of time. The other is Olayinka Ladapo who’s just been sent out on loan. So basically, without Benteke, Crystal Palace’s no scoring streak is set to continue indefinitely.
#3 Leroy Sane takes his chance
Everyone knows that Manchester City have the strongest attack in the league. They can afford to leave superstars on the bench because they have other ones ready to take their place. For the opening weeks of the season, we’ve seen Leroy Sane take a backseat to his fellow attackers but now it was his turn to hog the spotlight.
Sane for Gabriel Jesus was the only change from the 6-0 drubbing of Watford. The German scored City’s winning goal in their 3rd round EFL Cup tie at West Brom, thus earning him a place in the starting XI.
The 21-year old responded by being at the heart of everything good attacking wise for City. Not only did he score the first goal of the game, he assisted City’s second, completed 5 dribbles, created 5 chances and collected a man of the match award.
#2 Ruben Loftus-Cheek: the only creative spark
Instead of sitting back and inviting pressure onto themselves, Crystal Palace decided to take the game to Manchester City at their own ground. It’s clear that Pep Guardiola didn’t expect such an approach so it was no surprise that City looked open every time Palace counter-attacked in the 1st half.
Their engine for such an approach was provided by Ruben Loftus-Cheek who acted as Hodgson’s driving force through the middle. Every time he decided to run with the ball, men ran off him, City defenders scarpered and things happened.
The 21-year old completed 3 dribbles, created 1 chance, had 2 shots on goal and maintained an 83% pass accuracy, despite playing in an attacking position. The Englishman has a bright future ahead of him if he can just keep his head up when in transition.
#1 Manchester City are relentless in attack
This season the aim of the game seems to be who can score the most goals between the two Manchester clubs. Both teams are not just satisfied with 1-0 leads, they want to score as many goals as possible. As soon as Palace’s resistance was broken, the floodgates opened again and City once again showed their ruthless side.
Throughout the course of the match, City had 25 attempts on goal, 9 shots on target and made 725 passes, that translated into 72% possession. Manchester City have now scored 21 goals this Premier League season with 11 of them coming in their last two games.
