With a sense of pessimism in the air, Crystal Palace travel to Manchester City to start a run of games against (arguably) the three best teams in the league. Palace are still on zero points at the bottom of the table after five games. Things aren’t looking good for the Eagles and this fixture does not make it any easier for the South London side.
Despite losing their first five games, Palace’s most recent game has been a win against Huddersfield in the Carabao cup third round. This will surely give the players a boost of confidence ahead of this fixture. The Eagles looked convincing against Huddersfield with some good spells.
This will be the first test for Roy Hodgson against one of the top clubs in the league. He will be hoping to pull something out of the bag and shock the footballing world by beating Manchester City, but in reality it looks as though Palace will be lucky to come away with just a point.
Roy Hodgson has a large squad to pick from with the only absences being Wilfried Zaha and Connor Wickham. Mamadou Sakho and Pape Souare (who both featured against Huddersfield in the week) will both be available for the match, and Hodgson has said that Sakho will start.
It will be interesting to see if the quality of the side will improve with the addition of Mamadou Sakho. It is however, hard to believe that it will be enough to outperform Manchester City.
City look like strong title contenders this year and will be looking to prove that further against the struggling Eagles on Saturday. They have got off to an amazing start with four wins and a draw in their first five games.
An impressive 16 goals have come from those five matches with Sergio Aguero in his usual great form. Another player that is establishing himself as a threat in the City team this year is Gabriel Jesus. He currently has the highest proportion of goals to minutes in Premier League history and looks likely to not lose that record any time soon.
Of course, Pep Guardiola and his team will be attentive of the fact that no game is an easy game in the Premier League. In addition to that, Crystal Palace have somewhat of a reputation for being giant killers. It is possible that Manchester City will not be at their best and that Crystal Palace can capitalize albeit unlikely.
Crystal Palace have only avoided defeat once in the last 14 games against City, with a win back in 2015 at Selhurst Park. Manchester City have scored 19 goals in the last five games against the Eagles which is undoubtedly an astonishingly high number of goals to concede.
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