Manchester City 2 Crystal Palace 2: Player Ratings and MOTM
By David Crook
Manchester City somehow managed to claw a draw from the mouth of victory today against Crystal Palace.
If ever a single match summed up a Manchester City season so far, then this was that game. Littered with missed opportunities, some brilliance and then some truly disastrous defending.
There is a definition of insanity usually attributed to Albert Einstein, which suggests it is defined as repeating the same mistakes. For some reason today, Pep Guardiola returned to the tactical set up and patterns which have come undone so many times already this season.
In recent games Guardiola has changed things around and this has brought some improved results, but today the reversion back to 4-3-3 just brought all the old problems back to the fore.
City lacked incision. Tempo was too slow and we telegraphed our intentions so obviously they were easy to counter. The slow metronomic rhythms set by Gundogan were instilling sleep.
We look at the player performances in the draw and before eventually selecting Sergio Aguero as the Man of the Match. Anyway, we start with looking at the Defence.