Crystal Palace vs. Manchester City: Winners and Losers from Premier League
Manchester City's title bid was firmly derailed at Selhurst Park on Monday night, as they suffered a Premier League defeat to Crystal Palace by a 2-1 scoreline.
Glenn Murray scored the opening goal in the first half after a long spell of pressure by City, and straight after the restart, Jason Puncheon doubled the lead with a tremendous free-kick.
Yaya Toure, who was terrible otherwise, smashed in one for City as they poured forward late on—but City couldn't find an equaliser.
Here are all our winners and losers from the game.
Winner: Glenn Murray
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Having scored the goals to send Palace up from the Championship to the Premier League in 2013, it was unfortunate that Glenn Murray was forced to miss most of the following season through injury.
Lately this term, though, the striker has rediscovered fitness and form in a big way—his close-range finish against City was his fifth goal in five games, and his overall work rate and willingness to help out his team in every area of the pitch more than justified his time on the pitch.
Murray was lucky to get away with a handball inside his own box and was offside when he scored Palace's opener, but the fact he is always in these positions for the team means he makes his own luck. He also won the free-kick for what turned out to be the winning goal.
Loser: Michael Oliver
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Referee Michael Oliver was, of course, relying on his assistants to note any offside incidents, and between them, the team missed at least one and potentially two offside calls in the buildup to Palace's opening goal.
Not only that, but in taking City's players to task after they protested furiously, he didn't pull up Vincent Kompany when the captain put his hands on the referee—a direct opposite to the second yellow card, and subsequent red, shown by the same ref to Angel Di Maria in early March.
In the second half, Oliver missed a quite blatant handball by Murray which should have given City a penalty.
Winner: Alan Pardew
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Alan Pardew shifted down the table a few places when he went from Newcastle United to Crystal Palace, but he certainly sounded confident about his chances of reversing those positions when he joined the Eagles.
A few months on and no wonder; his side are up to 11th with this win over City, four points ahead of his former club. Their overall form has been nothing short of tremendous for a bottom-half club, with six wins in the last 10 in the league.
He got the better of his adversary on the night by playing a tight, compact defence and very fast wingers to support Murray in attack, and his team deservedly took the spoils.
Loser: Yaya Toure
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He might have scored the goal which briefly gave Manchester City some hope in the match, but over the entire 90 minutes, Yaya Toure was as poor as he has been in all his time at the club.
The Ivorian lost control of the ball early on and went downhill from there, being overrun by the excellent James McArthur and Joe Ledley and never getting to grips with Palace's searing counter-attacks on either side of him.
Going forward, Toure is supposed to be a huge asset to the City attack—and sure, he scored—but he sent six shots off target, most of them wildly over or wide, and was unable to play anything like telling through balls into the area. Even his set pieces were put to shame by Puncheon's effort.
This summer, it's probably time to accept that City need to rebuild around someone else in the centre of the pitch.
Loser: Manuel Pellegrini
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This was due to be a winners' slide and would have featured Palace's midfield pairing of Ledley-McArthur, especially the latter, but the defeat is such a devastating blow to any lingering title hopes that City had that we've got to make it about Manuel Pellegrini instead.
He might have won the league last year, but his side have fallen well below expectations since then; not impacting in the Champions League again, out of both domestic cups early on and now down in fourth place in the Premier League table.
Nine points off top spot having played a game more than leaders Chelsea, City are closer to fifth than first. At this rate, there will be few improvements from this term Pellegrini can point to in order to keep hold of his job in summer.
