Crystal Palace 2-2 Manchester City: 10-men visitors twice come from behind to draw with defiant Eagles to leave Pep Guardiola’s side with just one win in NINE games

Some storms take longer to clear than others, and the storm battering Manchester City is apparently not ready to move on yet.

They have had worse days than this of late, but that is little consolation in the analysis of a match in which Pep Guardiola’s lost souls twice fell behind a relegation candidate and finished a meandering performance with just ten men.

If the hope was that a home win against Nottingham Forest would serve as smelling salt under a broken nose, how misplaced that was. As we have seen so often in this dismal season, the champions were a mess of mistakes. Of indecisive attacks. Of weak confidence and nerves.

Once again questions will be asked of Kyle Walker. He played Daniel Munoz aside when Crystal Palace were 1-0 up and his solution, however small, is that three other men also had their fingerprints on the problem. The second goal gave less opportunity to share the blame – his positioning of Maxence Lacroix was very weak.

But let’s give City something, and this is a strange sign of the times because they haven’t lost. Erling Haaland gave them the first of their equalizers, and its creation speaks to the value of Kevin De Bruyne, and Rico Lewis scored the goal for 2-2. It was also a beauty, but it was canceled out by the late lunge that saw him receive a second yellow card.

It was one of those days for City and it’s been one of those seasons. Every step forward comes with at least one step in the opposite direction, and so this stinking run of form now includes six defeats, two draws, one win and 21 goals conceded in nine games in all competitions. Guardiola is a genius who can’t seem to find a solution at the moment.

Rico Lewis was shown a second yellow card late in the match, making City’s task even more difficult

Oliver Glasner’s side have now drawn seven games this season, with just two wins so far

We can talk here about the injuries and absences of Nathan Aké and Manuel Akanji, along with so many others who played up to that point. It is backed up by what City had on the bench: two goalkeepers and six men aged 22 or under.

But Crystal Palace’s struggles, even a somewhat resurgent Crystal Palace, will always feel jarring.

City’s troubles started early. Very early. Even within the first ten seconds, when Josko Gvardiol lost the flight of a high ball against the wind and briefly took his eyes off Jean-Philippe Mateta.

With better rebounding this might have led to a one-on-one, but instead the attack turned into a warning for a team whose slow start is now a recurring theme.

This was underlined when Munoz put Palace ahead after four minutes – it was the seventh time City had conceded a goal in the first fifteen minutes. As with so many of them, this too could be traced back to a number of errors.

Firstly, we’d say Stefan Ortega should have done better with Munoz’s strike, which was driven low over the keeper and squirmed under his hand. A stronger wrist would have kept him out, so some criticism would be fair. This also applies to Kyle Walker, who played him fractionally onside from the other wing.

And yet the bigger concern for Guardiola will be the general appearance of his men failing to pick up runners.

That happened against Tottenham, Bournemouth and Feyenoord, among others, and it happened again here, with neither Rico Lewis nor Matheus Nunes joining Munoz as he jogged unattended into the space between them and waited for Will Hughes to deliver the killer ball from the center of the would play a match. the field. The pass was a good one, but Guardiola has seen the film too many times to have any surprise about the outcome.

His irritation on the touchline was evident and would only worsen throughout the half as City’s play was sloppy.

By the time of the goal, Nunes had already cleared a cross straight out of play, and not long after Munoz’s breakthrough, Ortega almost gifted Palace a second by spilling a catch into the path of Ebrechi Eze. Combined with Lewis’s struggles to juggle the two roles of left-back and midfielder, Guardiola might have benefited from a pair of scratch gloves.

We cannot overlook Palace in all of this. Goodness no. They forced City to lose possession and when the ball was coughed up, the counters quickly followed.

Eze and Jefferson Lerma would have been the beneficiaries, but Ruben Dias blocked their efforts – he was by far City’s standout defender – and Ismaila Sarr also fired over the bar as Guardiola’s defense struggled to deal with a corner. The champions held on, but from such a precarious situation they came alive.

First, Ilkay Gundogan hit a volley against the post, after which Haaland scored his thirteenth goal of the season. Kevin De Buyne always gets the best out of him and after already setting up one chance for the Norwegian – brilliantly saved by Henderson – he scored the equalizer with a delightful cross. The header, which went over Henderson, was even better than the throw.

City were more stable after the break. More reliable. Less prone to blunders. But then, just as there was some momentum in their favour, they gave the lead away again, this time to a set piece and another Walker error. Hughes’ corner came in hard and with a poor, in-swinging curve, but Walker’s attempts to jump Maxence Lacroix were dismal.

It took City 26 minutes to draw level in the first round; their second lasted about half as long. The move went smoothly, with a quick exchange between Gundogan, De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva deep in Palace territory before the latter fed Lewis. Instead of touching, he drilled into the top corner.

He was quickly booked for a foul, after the restart only became extra relevant when he was sent off the field five minutes before the end for coming on for Trevoh Chalobah. That’s exactly the way things are going for City now.