Manchester City demolishes Crystal Palace 1-4 at Selhurst Park

Manchester City needed just sixteen minutes to make its intentions clear at Selhurst Park, and ninety to confirm them with a resounding 1-4 win over Crystal Palace in a Premier League fixture. Erling Haaland opened the scoring with a header and closed it out with a finish into the top corner, but in between there was a stretch of the second half in which City simply ran over a Palace side that never found a way to slow it down.

The first half ended 0-1, with Haaland's goal in the 16th minute coming off a cross from Antoine Semenyo, but the game truly broke open in a span of just five minutes in the second half. In the 53rd minute, Rayan Cherki slotted home a low finish from a Phil Foden assist to make it 0-2. Two minutes later, in the 55th, Crystal Palace pulled one back in the strangest of fashions: an own goal from Gianluigi Donnarumma made it 1-2, and for a moment it looked like things could get complicated for the visitors. That illusion lasted exactly three minutes: in the 58th minute, Cherki struck again, this time with a right-footed effort from outside the box assisted by Josko Gvardiol, to make it 1-3. With the result already all but settled, Haaland put the finishing touch in the 83rd minute with a left-footed strike into the top corner, again assisted by Foden, sealing the final 1-4.

Manchester City's control was total from start to finish. Crystal Palace barely touched the ball, and when it did, it failed to create any real danger beyond a few scattered chances from Eddie Nketiah and Yeremy Pino, who rattled the crossbar with a free kick in one of the home side's few clear opportunities.

The numbers behind the dominance

The stats confirm what was plain to see on the pitch: a one-sided match, with Manchester City controlling the ball and creating chances steadily while Palace simply tried to hold on.

The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots also backs up the visitors' superiority: 2.387 for Manchester City against just 0.987 for Crystal Palace, a gap explained by the volume of shots on target Pep Guardiola's side produced compared to the single shot on frame that Palace managed.

Before kickoff, our projection gave Manchester City a 50% chance of winning, against 22% for Crystal Palace and 28% for a draw, with expected goals of 1.01 for the home side and 1.61 for the visitors. The final result blew well past that forecast: City not only won, it did so by a three-goal margin that not even the projection most favorable to the visitors had anticipated.

What the result leaves behind

In the standings, Manchester City moves to 6 points with a perfect record through two matches, while Crystal Palace remains without a point after two defeats. The gap between the two sides in the table stands at 6 points, a fairly accurate reflection of what played out on the field at Selhurst Park. For Palace, the task now is to recover from a rout that left the team without answers for much of the match. For City, it is confirmation that when it finds the spaces, it remains a team capable of settling matches in bursts of just a few minutes.