PALACE PARTY AS LAZY CITY BLOW IT AGAIN
GUILTY of believing this was won, Manchester City. Lazy on the ball, lazier off it. Isn’t that the very defi- nition of complacency?
Manager Pep Guardiola, who has fiercely defended his players recently, disagrees but is watching the history-makers conspire to find new ways to drop points when it feels almost impossible to do so.
Liverpool could be 12 points clear of City by the time the champions are back from the Club World Cup. That will have been a very quiet flight to Jeddah last night. City, you sense, could do without FIFA’s jamboree in the desert, although some will argue that it will act as a distraction from what is happening at home.
‘We are not consistent enough to close the games,’ Guardiola said, as he blamed carelessness. He thinks they went for it too much, yet it looked as though they didn’t go for it enough.
It was Crystal Palace, yet again. Palace, who had picked up one result of real note since September. Palace, whose manager, Roy Hodgson, has recently had to apologise for calling out the fans. Palace, who had half a team missing and a cluster of kids.
Palace had felt like a dangerous fixture right before the Club World Cup and they remained in the contest until the last. Hodgson suggested before this match that he is now ‘like the old people walking around the supermarket who stand around and get in your way’ and the way he set Palace up, it was hard to disagree.
They have had great success in this stadium playing this way. Only Manchester United have won more times at the Etihad against Guardiola’s City than Palace and the pattern during victories has been similar. While not another, this felt like a Palace victory.
‘If we wanted excuses for a defeat here we had loads of them,’ Hodgson said. ‘People playing in that game with no experience at all. Excellent work from the players, I can’t praise them enough. The fans must be very proud. We changed our system with respect to City… but we also did it to get our [only] 11 senior players on the field.’
It was another late goal handed to opponents — again. Guardiola told his players at the beginning of the season that they were back at the bottom of the mountain and it needed reclimbing.
With only one win in six, their grip on the rock has loosened. They have fallen. It’s not insurmountable by any stretch, especially for this club, but that mountain just grew by a few feet.
Michael Olise secured the stoppage-time equaliser from the penalty spot, gifted by Phil Foden’s wild hack at Jean-Philippe Mateta. Foden gave cheap ball away in the build-up, too. That was the real crime after Mateta had set up this finale 14 minutes earlier.
City were upset at referee Paul Tierney because he didn’t blow for a foul earlier in the move leading to the penalty, but they have only themselves to blame. Four times in the last nine matches they have conceded game-defining goals in the final 10 minutes. Boos rang out at the Etihad Stadium, maybe some for Tierney and others for the team.
That really does not happen often.
But watching them give up on putting Palace away once Rico Lewis had netted the second, a sweet half-volley nine minutes after the break, should enrage everybody at this club.
This should have been about City being back near their fluent best, chances created so frequently that every one of the 10 outfield players manufactured one in the first half. No team in the Premier League have ever recorded that statistic.
Yet Julian Alvarez fluffed a header, Marc Guehi threw himself in front of a certain Rodri goal. Josko Gvardiol couldn’t convert a clever Ruben Dias chip. More followed... and then the implosion.
Jack Grealish gave City a lead on 24 minutes, smartly passing into Dean Henderson’s far corner following a cute reverse ball by Foden, operating centrally in front of Gareth Southgate and linking with Grealish in a way England ought to exploit.
VAR fancied there was an offside, deliberating for an excruciating three minutes, even if Nathaniel Clyne’s derriere seemed relatively obviously to be City’s saviour.
Out came the lines, the zoom. Over and over. Guardiola sat on a drinks box, Marcelo Bielsa style, in exasperation.
Jeers had filled the ground, just as when Alvarez’s bent free-kick evaded everybody but was correctly ruled out for offside, with Rodri interfering with Henderson’s line of sight. Lewis doubled the advantage before City started admiring themselves and Palace stole the keys.
Another clean sheet disappeared when Mateta peeled off the back of Nathan Ake to tap in Jeffery Schlupp’s cross. Dias had not sufficiently shown Schlupp away from danger and Palace pounced.
Guardiola seemed agitated all afternoon and he’ll certainly be restless now. Foden clattered into Mateta, a stonewall penalty, and Olise stroked it past Ederson.