Phil Foden shone as Manchester City moved back within two points of Premier League leaders Arsenal with a comfortable 3-0 win over Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n
Antoine Semenyo and Omar Marmoush both struck from Foden passes in the first half before Savinho added a late third as City kept their slender title hopes alive at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
With both title challengers having two games remaining, City do still have a chance of securing a seventh league crown in nine years.<\/p>\n
Yet after Pep Guardiola made six changes and, with the game played in a subdued atmosphere, there appeared an acceptance the odds were heavily against them and focus had shifted to the FA Cup final.<\/p>\n
City were frenetic against Brentford on Saturday but Arsenal’s victory over West Ham on Sunday seemed to have changed the mood.<\/p>\n
City arguably benefited on this occasion from facing a Palace side whose eyes may already be on the Conference League final. On this evidence, however, they can expect few favours when Eagles play Arsenal next.<\/p>\n
There was an obvious positive in the performance of Foden, who was making his first Premier League start in more than two months.<\/p>\n
After two seasons of struggles with form and fitness, there was ample evidence of why the club are prepared to offer him a new contract.<\/p>\n
His selection however, while Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku were among the substitutes, indicated Guardiola was looking ahead to Saturday’s Wembley clash with Chelsea.<\/p>\n
City were slow to get going and Palace thought they had scored in the second minute.<\/p>\n
Jean-Philippe Mateta\u2019s shot looked to have crossed the line before Gianluigi Donnarumma clawed away but Brennan Johnson was ruled offside in the build-up.<\/p>\n
Yeremy Pino also had an effort deflected narrowly wide and Chris Richards headed over from the resulting corner.<\/p>\n
City gradually settled and grew in confidence after Rayan Ait-Nouri rifled a shot into the side-netting.<\/p>\n
Foden then took centre stage as he played Semenyo in on goal with a clever backheel. The Ghana international finished clinically.<\/p>\n
Palace almost responded instantly as Tyrick Mitchell tested Donnarumma but Marmoush could have doubled City\u2019s lead when he jinked into the area, only for a heavy touch to let Maxence Lacroix clear.<\/p>\n
Marmoush made no mistake after 39 minutes, turning and firing past Dean Henderson after Foden brought down a high ball in the area.<\/p>\n
Foden almost set up another when he crossed for the fit-again Josko Gvardiol, who was making his first appearance since January, but Henderson saved his header.<\/p>\n
Palace rallied after the break as Ismaila Sarr shot at Donnarumma and Jorgen Strand Larsen blazed over.<\/p>\n
But the visitors were unable to trouble City regularly and substitute Cherki combined with Savinho to wrap up the scoring, six minutes from time.<\/p>\n
\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phil Foden shone as Manchester City moved back within two points of Premier League leaders Arsenal with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-447432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}