In the 29th round of the Premier League, Manchester City was forced to draw 0-0 away from home by Crystal Palace. The two teams have met in the league this season, with City suffering 1 draw and 1 defeat and failing to score. Crystal Palace also became Manchester United's second Premier League team to keep a clean sheet this season.
Midweek Champions League rotation "whole life", more than Liverpool one day of rest, the opponent is the desireless Crystal Palace, Manchester City 3 points stable? Contrary! Facing the "Eagles" who were pecked at home, and then fighting the leader of Selhurst Park, he still had no way to win the opponent. Blue Moon, who scored zero goals in 18 shots and led by only four points in more games, further explored the league's fault tolerance rate before the second game of The Army city on April 10, especially when the offensive core Bernardo Silva was in poor form recently, and Pep Guardiola, who believed that the starting Pep Guardiola, refused to be replaced for the fourth time in his Premier League career, and even let Crystal Palace see the possibility of home-and-away doubles.
Before the game, the industry's top stars were confident that Manchester City would win the game, Arsenal star Paul Merson predicted that the Blue Moons would win 2-1, and Mark Lawrensen simply gave 3-0. In addition to crystal palace coach Vieira's premier league experience is still shallow, just look at the layout, it is difficult to say that Guardiola lack of attention to crystal palace, after the match against Lisbon Athletic completely passed, the main players such as Griglish, Mahrez, Rodri, De Bruyne, Cancello and Walker all returned, but the idea is still the previous frontless formation, this time standing at the top of the formation is Foden.
But it is clear that this lightweight forward is particularly difficult to attack against crystal palace's highly coordinated defense. The biggest problem may still come from Bernardo Silva: the Portuguese, who previously played as a pseudo-No. 9 and a right winger, is one of the heroes of Manchester City's mid-league scoring, but recently Mahrez's foot is extremely smooth, Guardiola has to take care of the playing time of the two Hukou Ben Foden and Greelish, B has to return to midfield, it turns out that after moving away from the box, the direct threat of B has dropped sharply by a notch.
It is true that Manchester City, who occupied the absolute initiative in the first 1 hour, may indeed lack goal luck, but it must also be seen that Crystal Palace did not make significant mistakes in defense, Andelo and De Bruyne have successively hit the post, which is actually not a regular offensive routine for Manchester City, especially in the case of the high concentration of the opposing goalkeeper Guaita, the center Foden who only touched the ball 9 times in the first half almost made Manchester City feel one less person on the offensive end.
At this moment, Blue Moon fans may miss Sterling, although the trend of spitting out cakes has increased unabated this season, but the Blue Moon 7, which has scored 7 goals against the "Eagles", is still the most experienced presence in the team against Crystal Palace; and even if Sterling does not play, Jesus, who has played on the right winger before, also watched 90 minutes on the bench. Until the end of the game, Guardiola did not complete even one substitution, which is the fourth time under Guardiola since he coached the Premier League in 2017, while the rest of the Premier League peers in the same period, this alternative scene has only happened twice at most.
Compared to manchester City, which believes in a road to the black, Crystal Palace uses the compact defense of all the people to let the visiting team hand over two consecutive white rolls for the first time in the Guardiola era: Chelsea loan player Gallagher, who is one of the biggest discoveries in the Premier League this season, ran 12.5 kilometers this game, setting a new high for the team's single-game running distance of the season, and the nearly overdrawn Gallagher after the game is still breathless in the face of the microphone: "I can't feel my legs now, it's even difficult to speak, we took 1 point from the leader, The 1 point was well deserved, the result of everyone doing their best, we completed our game plan, organized the defense, and tried to take our chances in the counterattack. ”
Vieira was also particularly excited about the performance of his men: "I am satisfied with the way we control the game, we can even score 1 goal and win the game. This statement is not the princess selling melons, Zaha's cold shots in the upper and lower half of the game have made the fans who watched the game feel cold. Guardiola also gave enough affirmation to the opponent:"Vieira knows the Premier League very well, their defensive formation has been very solid, and in the last 10 games, we have no room to make mistakes. ”
In the first leg 2-0 and the second leg 0-0, Crystal Palace became the second Premier League team to keep a clean sheet for Manchester City of the season after Manchester United. Espanyol has conceded a full 10 points for Crystal Palace in five seasons, the fifth team to be the biggest team, while the remaining Spurs (19 points), Liverpool (17 points), Manchester United (16 points) and Chelsea (15 points) are all Big6 teams.
So far this season, Manchester City have faced Tottenham hotspur and Southampton without a win, and Crystal Palace is the third team. In the face of opponents with obvious tactical rivalry, Guardiola always insisted on using the set he was best at to continue to prove his tactical design advantages, which was a very good knightly demeanor, but compared to the opponents who were almost clear, after the game, guardiola insisted that the starting performance was excellent and there was no need to change the guard, and the price paid for stubbornness was not light. As Gary Neville put it: "If Liverpool come to play this game, they can definitely win because they have better strikers and it's 5 men, Luis Díaz is incredible, but the previous Jota was also good enough, not to mention trident, two great championship teams, the difference may lie in these details." ”
Wen | Yang Jian
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