Man City Draw vs Crystal Palace Opens Title Door for Liverpool

In a match against Manchester City, Crystal Palace left the door open for Liverpool to snatch the championship title in their upcoming match against Arsenal on Wednesday. 

City and Palace left Selhurst Park with a goalless draw of 0-0, which provided The Reds the opportunity to close the gap with one point in their title race with City.

The football action at Selhurst Park was fierce with Crystal Palace eager to deny Manchester City the chance to retain their title this season. Meanwhile, Coach Pep Guardiola was left frustrated with the match’s result. 

Significant moments

The whole match ended up being the whole Manchester City versus Vicente Guaita as the brilliant goalkeeper denied City strikers to score a single goal from start to finish.

Before the one hour mark, Guaita denied Riyad Mahrez a save following Kevin de Bruyne’s strike with the ball hitting the post. In the first half, Aymeric Laporte disrupted Joao Cancelo’s shot when it boomeranged from the crossbar.

City did their best to recover in the second half but the Palace goal was heavily guarded by Guaita and no one from The Sky Blues could get past his watch. The match ended up fruitless with 0-0, which provided City’s rival Liverpool a chance to gain one point in the title race in their match against Arsenal with a 13/5 Singaporepool odds. 

How does Palace prevent City from getting the lead?

Even though possessing 46 touches and 18 shots, the visitors were shocked by the robust defence of Palace. Aside from Manchester United back in the 2020/21 season, Palace is the second team that prevented Guardiola’s team from scoring in both home and away matches.

According to Guardiola, he admitted that he never thought that the game with Crystal Palace would be a tricky one. On the other hand, Palace coach Patrick Vieira said that he lets his players play with passion and motivates them to play with strong defence if they want to win.

Guardiola said they did everything to win

Previously, City had 14 points ahead of Liverpool in the season despite having played two more matches, although Guardiola knew that nothing was certain. 

In an interview with Guardiola, he said “We did everything that we could to win but it wasn’t enough. My men have prepared for this match and we commended Crystal Palace for giving us a fair game.”

“We still have one more match in the season, the international break is an opportunity to make some changes. I want to teach my players to master their skills properly.”

Vieira is satisfied with the match against City

The coach of Crystal Palace Patrick Vieira commented about the match against Man City. 

He said, “In playing against Manchester City, aside from having a strong defence, sometimes you also need to employ some luck. We all know how powerful City is, they have won five titles under their name.”

“It was difficult at first but we managed to drive them away and frustrated them to lead the title race. All in all, I’m so proud of my boys and their performance is the demonstration of true passion,” he added.

Final thoughts

Throughout the game, Vieira demonstrated a calm demeanour and it is an indicator that Palace deserve a point for not giving up. Now that the lead for the title race has turned around, it is up to Liverpool to take this as an opportunity. You can also take his chance to back Liverpool in your sports betting. 

City might need to strengthen their attacking power and improve their strategy to break an opponent’s defences. Palace showed that despite not being part of the top ten, they are a team that you don’t want to mess with.