5 Things we learned from Man Cities convincing win over Crystal Palace
That was a much better City performance compared to last week. Although they beat Bournemouth last Sunday there were glaring issues all over the pitch in Enzo Marseca’s first Premier League game in charge, it looked like this game was going down the same path in the opening 15 minutes which were end-to-end with chances for both sides but we did get our first goal of the evening after a brilliant cross from Semenyo was met by none other than Erling Haaland who’s header looped over Dean Henderson to give the Citizens the lead. From there it was all City who were creating chance after chance with the best two falling to Phil Foden who had two sitters in the box but couldn’t convert as City went into half-time with a 1-goal lead, it took just ten minutes into the second half for City to double their lead as Foden played the ball into Cherki on the edge of the box who evaded the challenge of about three defenders before poking the ball past Henderson to score a quite brilliant goal. Just two minutes later Palace hit back with an outstanding Yeremy Pino free-kick that hit the bar before coming back off Donnarumma before landing in the net, game on early in the second half. Well actually not for long as just three minutes later Cherki picked up the ball on the edge of the box and fired a shot on his right-foot which took a deflection off Richards lifting the ball over Henderson to extend Cities lead again, that goal deflated Palace massively allowing City to add one more before the final whistle as Foden went on a brilliant run into the box before finding Haaland who fired into the roof of the net to add a cherry on op of the cake at Selhurst Park. A much improved performance from City who have now won their first two games in the Premier League, can they challenge for the title this year?
That’s the type of performance we expect from Enzo Maresca’s City. They got away with it last week scoring two late goals against Bournemouth but I thought City were excellent today for most of the game, Maresca made one change from last weeks team bringing in Rayan Cherki from the start who set up both goals in their late comeback and the Frenchman carried on in the same fashion today, two goals out of the top drawer in the second half killed Crystal Palace and allowed City to take their foot off the gas for the remainder of the game. It wasn’t going to take long for Erling Haaland to get back on the scoresheet this season and in typical Haaland style he took his goals brilliantly with his first half header the pick of the two in my opinion looping his header over a helpless Dean Henderson in the Palace net, defensively City looked really comfortable tonight albeit up against a horrific Palace attack but Guehi, Dias, Khusanov and Gvardiol all played their part in keeping Cities tempo high throughout the match. Overall Maresca will be much happier with his sides performance tonight and will be hoping this is the City he gets over the next few games and going forward.
A worrying performance from Crystal Palace. I didn’t watch Palace last week at Everton but in the highlights it looked like they were unlucky not to at least open the scoring in the first half but they never really looked like scoring tonight bar a miraculous Yeremy Pino free-kick, Adam Wharton aside I don’t think I could pick out another Palace player that even had an average game tonight. The attack in particular of Nketiah, Strand-Larsen and Pino was unwatchable giving the ball away over and over again with sloppy passes, misplaced first touches etc that must have frustrated the life out of Palace supporters, it wasn’t much better defensively with the whole back-line just falling apart in the second half conceding three goals that they were never coming back from. The only shining light from the game for Palace was Adam Wharton who was head and shoulders the best midfielder on the pitch today, every single good thing that Palace did in the game came through him and he must have been so frustrated with how poor his teammates were tonight, I wonder how long Crystal Palace will be able to keep him for? I wouldn’t imagine it’ll be too long.
Rayan Cherki keeps on being the leagues finest entertainer. He was by some distance the signing of the season last year and I can’t help but love the way Rayan Cherki plays football, he’s a player we’re less and less of nowadays in that he plays the game with a swagger that you can’t control which will either drive you crazy or make you marvel at the things he does with a football. He saved the game last week against Bournemouth with a ridiculous pass through to Gvardiol for the winner meaning that he always going to start this game which actually looked like it was going to backfire on Marseca after a pretty average first half from the Frenchman, but then he came alive at the start of the second half with a goal that very few if any players can score in this league with control from another planet paired with a cheeky toe-poke finish. The second goal is straight from the top drawer as well showing his two-footedness which we saw plenty of last season which is reminiscent of Ousmane Dembele at PSG, at only 23 years old his game can still improve loads as well which is a scary proposition for the rest of the league. Will he be a contender for player of the season come the end of the year? He’s started on the right foot.
Any more business to do before the window closes? For City we saw Ayyoub Bouaddi makes his debut tonight but I’d expect a couple more through the door before the window closes on Tuesday, the first one being Enzo Fernandez who has been heavily linked with a switch to Manchester throughout the summer. Having agreed personal terms already we’ll wait and see if City and Chelsea can agree a fee which I would imagine could be over £130 million. The other player that has been linked to City over the last couple of weeks has been Cody Gakpo from Liverpool who has also apparently agreed personal terms but Liverpool would want a replacement on the wing before they would even look at selling the Dutchman, it wouldn’t be a bad couple of additions to an already stacked City side. For Crystal Palace it looked like Joel Ordonez was joining from Club Brugge as a centre-back but there was problems with the medical so that deal has collapsed which is a massive shame considering Palace’s light options at centre-back, they are also in desperate need of another attacker but I’ve seen any links as of tonight so we’ll have to wait and see on that one. With the window closing soon who do you think could end up joining both clubs? Let’s see over the next few days.