Manchester City's Win over Crystal Palace Was a Throwback to the Crossing Era

SELHURST PARK, London — Manchester City’s 2-1 Premier League victory over Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon was a game unremarkable for many, many reasons, but simultaneously notable for one: The quality of crossing on show was absolutely stellar.

It’s not something you’d expect to see when turning up to a game in which one of the sides is managed by Pep Guardiola—a man who values possession over everything but goals, and whose Juego de Posicion stratagems have inspired so many clubs, ranging from Borussia Dortmund to AFC Bournemouth.

With Palace you expect it; it’s their bread and butter after all. In Wilfried Zaha and Andros Townsend, you have two extremely quick wingers; in Christian Benteke, you have a dominant target man; and in Jason Puncheon and Yohan Cabaye, there exists two superb set-piece deliverers.

Indeed, Alan Pardew’s men played to their outright strengths against City, utilising Zaha on the right flank, forcing corners to allow Scott Dann to join the attacking cast and bringing Connor Wickham on to try to take advantage of the fact Bacary Sagna had to fill in at centre-back for most of the game.

But the surprise was that City followed suit. We’re used to seeing them use the flanks to stretch the pitch, but usually they cut the ball back infield; square passes in the box following an Aleksandar Kolarov switch to the right have been a common occurrence in the Citizens’ game plans under Pep.

The shock was what happened after the switch in this match. Pablo Zabaleta, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne swung in ball after ball, apparently fearless of Palace’s colossal central defensive pairing, and a host of City players went extremely close to netting from the deliveries. Sergio Aguero kneed the best chance into the sky after a vicious Kolarov inswinger.

While the opening two goals were more a product of clever interplay in the box, they were the anomalous attacks from both sides. Yaya Toure’s winner, straight from a clever, low-corner routine, was a fitting way to decide the game.

Stephen Pond/Getty Images

The performance will stand as something of a throwback to Premier League performances of old, where the quality of a measured delivery could often decide a game. Modern football, even in England, has departed quite blatantly from “traditional” wide play—the art of swinging a ball into the box from a chalked-up area of the pitch—but this match revived it.

The percentages might be low, but it can allow true, individual wide quality to shine. De Bruyne might just be the best crosser in the league—superior even to Leicester City’s Marc Albrighton—and it was a treat to see him picking out team-mates in a crowded area.

While this win for Guardiola won’t register on the richter scale of their season, this might just be an important nugget for the Spaniard to take away from it.

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