Haaland penalty earns City win at Selhurst Park

Erling Haaland’s second-half penalty earned Manchester City all three points away to Crystal Palace.

Action: Selhurst Park has been a difficult place for visiting teams this season and today proved no exception.

Manchester City had lots of early pressure, with Rodri having a shot saved early on by Vicente Guaita as the Eagles survived an early scramble.

However, from that point on they were able to reduce City’s threat. Indeed, for much of the first half the visitors had plenty of the ball but struggled to break down a very compact team.

Erling Haaland had a brilliant chance to open the scoring in the first period though. Nathan Aké burst into the box and put in a low ball across the face of goal that the Norwegian was expected to finish but the ball instead went flying over the bar.

That pattern carried on in the second period. Pep Guardiola elected to send on Julián Álvarez in the 58th minute and the Argentinian almost scored immediately. Álvarez did brilliantly to turn with the ball after Bernardo Silva’s pass but skied his effort when through on goal.

For all of Palace’s hard work defensively, they were eventually caught out by a short corner from which Ilkay Gundogan picked up the ball. Michael Olise was the first to react but the forward bundled into the City midfielder forcing referee Robert Jones to point to the spot.

Step up Haaland, who hadn’t had his best game in a City shirt but once again proved that you only need to have one good touch. The striker’s penalty sent Guaita the wrong way to score an important, and hard-earned, goal.

Palace did try to attack late on in search of an equaliser and while the likes of Wilfried Zaha had some bright moments, City were able to see the game out and earn three big points in the title race.

Big picture: The defending champions weren’t at their best at Selhurst Park, not even close. It was a frustrating evening until that penalty but from that point on it was hard to see City slipping up. The Citizens now close the gap to Arsenal to two points ahead of the Gunners' game away to Fulham tomorrow.

For Patrick Vieira, this was a familiar sight. While they defended well for the vast majority of the game they were unable to create anything going forward. The Eagles have now gone three games in a row with a single shot on target – that must be worrying for the Palace manager.

xG: Crystal Palace (0.19) 0-1 (2.22) Manchester City

FULL-TIME | 3️⃣ points ✅

🦅 0-1 🔵 #ManCity pic.twitter.com/rpbjHRX1lw

— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 11, 2023