Crystal Palace 1-4 City: Cherki settles it in six minutes

Manchester City opened matchday 2 under the Friday night lights at Selhurst Park and won 4-1, though the final score is a great deal tidier than the ten minutes in the middle of the second half that actually decided it.

For an hour this was a controlled away performance rather than a ruthless one. Then the game briefly lost its shape, Crystal Palace got a goal they had done nothing to deserve, and City responded by scoring twice more inside half an hour to make the evening look routine in a way it had not been.

How the two sides arrived

Palace came into the night with nothing. They had lost 2-0 at Everton on the opening weekend and had not scored, which left them in the bottom four before a ball was kicked. There was no midweek fixture to blame and no obvious tactical accident to point at — simply a first week in which they had been second best.

City had beaten Bournemouth 2-1 at the Etihad, and the manner of that win had raised more questions than the result answered. They had trailed, dominated the ball without turning it into clear chances, and needed two late goals to take three points. Friday was, in that sense, an examination of whether the opening weekend had been a warning or an aberration.

An hour of control

Erling Haaland headed City in front on 17 minutes, meeting an Antoine Semenyo cross and directing it high into the middle of the goal. It was the sort of opener that suits a side happy to have the ball: score early, take the crowd out of it, and let the game come to you.

It worked for the rest of the half. Palace could not get out, and by the interval City had the sort of possession figure that usually means a home side is in trouble. The problem for the visitors was that one goal against a team defending its own box is a fragile lead, and the second half proved it.

The six minutes that finished it

Rayan Cherki made it two on 54, taking a Phil Foden pass and finishing left-footed from the centre of the box into the bottom left corner. Two minutes later the evening produced its oddest moment: Gianluigi Donnarumma turned the ball into his own net, and Palace had a goal without having built one. Selhurst Park, quiet for an hour, suddenly had a game.

It lasted three minutes. Cherki scored again on 59, this time with his right foot from outside the box after Joško Gvardiol found him, and whatever had been building in the stands drained away. Haaland completed the scoring on 84 with a left-footed finish from the centre of the box, set up again by Foden, to give himself a second goal and City a margin that matched the balance of play.

The numbers behind it

Palace finished with 27.8% of the ball, nine shots and one on target. City had 72.2%, eighteen shots and nine on target. Those are not the figures of a close game, and the only reason the scoreline ever suggested otherwise was a goal that came off a goalkeeper rather than out of anything Palace constructed.

Foden ended the night with two assists and Cherki with two goals from three shots. Haaland now has goals in consecutive matches to start the season. For a side that looked laboured in week one, three of the four goals here came from moves that took under ten seconds.

The player who changed the night

Rayan Cherki finished with two goals from three shots, which is the kind of return that turns a squad player into a starter. Both came in the six minutes after Palace had scored, and both were struck from different distances with different feet — one from inside the box with his left, one from outside it with his right. For a side whose opening weekend had been criticised for turning possession into very little, having someone willing to shoot from range changes the calculation for every defence that sits deep against them.

Three yellow cards were shown across the ninety minutes, two of them to City players in the first hour, which is a reminder that the visitors were not simply passing the evening away. Palace committed eight fouls to City ten — unusual figures for a side with a quarter of the ball, and a sign that City were pressing rather than sitting on their lead.

Where it leaves them

City sit top of the table on six points with a goal difference of plus four, level on points with Hull City and Chelsea and ahead on the third tie-break. Two games, two wins, six goals scored. Whatever the opening weekend suggested, the second has answered it for now.

Palace are nineteenth with no points and a goal difference of minus five, having conceded six in two matches and scored once — and that one off an opponent. The performance was not a collapse in the way the scoreline reads, but the pattern of two weeks without holding the ball is the thing that will worry them more than any individual result.