After a tumultuous few weeks, Manchester City returned to winning ways in the Premier League last weekend with a comeback victory over Luton Town at Kenilworth Road.
The champions ended a winless run of four top flight matches, but had to come through a scare to do so after initially falling behind to their struggling hosts. Those three points left City fourth in the table, four points adrift of leaders Liverpool.
This weekend, Pep Guardiola’s men play host to Crystal Palace, a side who have caused them more problems than most in recent seasons. During the 2021/22 campaign, for instance, the Eagles took four points from a possible six against City, although the champions did bounce back by doing the double over them last term.
In the here and now, however, Roy Hodgson’s men are barely posing a threat to anybody, and have taken just one point from their last five matches. As a consequence, they have tumbled down to 15th in the table, and are just seven points clear of the relegation zone.
But how will the two sides line up in Manchester this weekend? We’ve taken a look at their respective team news and predicted XIs below…
Man City Team News
Manchester City’s injury list is relatively short, but the players they are missing could hardly be more important to their attacking cause. Definitely sidelined is Kevin de Bruyne, with the Belgian playmaker targeting a return to action later this month, but there are also doubts over both Erling Haaland and Jeremy Doku.
The former has been in superb goal-scoring form, as always, this season, while the latter has made a seismic impact on the Premier League with his direct style of wing play since arriving in the summer transfer window. Haaland is currently battling a foot injury that he sustained during the recent defeat to Aston Villa game that left him unable to walk and ruled him out of both the win over Luton Town and a subsequent midweek Champions League clash. City have since said that they will treat the problem on a day-by-day basis, but also that are fairly confident that the problem will not keep the Norwegian out for too long. Speaking about the injury earlier in the week, Guardiola said: “I cannot answer [about Saturday], I don’t know. The next press conference I can be more precise.”
Elsewhere, Ederson could return between the sticks having missed Wednesday’s win over FK Crvena zvezda through illness.
Man City Predicted XI
Ederson; Kyle Walker, Ruben Dias, John Stones, Josko Gvardiol; Rodri, Mateo Kovacic; Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Jack Grealish; Julian Alvarez.
Elsewhere, however, Palace have a raft of lingering doubts to contend with. The likes of Eberechi Eze and Tyrick Mitchell are hugely uncertain, while Odsonne Edouard, Jefferson Lerma, and Sam Johnstone, although somewhat more hopeful, could also be missing.
Crystal Palace Predicted XI
Sam Johnstone; Joel Ward, Joachim Andersen, Marc Guehi, Nathaniel Clyne; Will Hughes, Chris Richards, Jefferson Lerma; Michael Olise, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Jeffrey Schlupp.
