Man City

Match report and free highlights as wasteful Manchester City drop two points in their quest to retain the Premier League title at Crystal Palace, ...

"Some of the players are going to need a few more days off but today showed that we are improving. He gave an impassioned defence of his team who had been unable to come up with the necessary quality for once. It is game on in the title race after this tenacious performance from Crystal Palace. The hosts deserved their point and were rewarded for not sitting back. The final pass was difficult because of the runs we had to make. Before the game we had the belief we would win. We've made it more exciting for the neutral but there's still a lot of games left." When you play against City, you have to be lucky at times and we forced that luck to be on our side. We have to win a lot of games. It was difficult to control the physicality they had and we had a lot of chances to win but we couldn't score. There was even time for the indefatigable Conor Gallagher to pounce on a slack header back to Ederson from John Stones and while his shot from an acute angle was off target, Vieira beamed with pride - as he did at the final whistle. "Now we have four points [clear at the top] and one game more. Despite 18 shots and 46 touches in the opposition box as part of 74 per cent possession, City were met by a red and blue wall.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola made a strange comment about the grass at Selhurst Park after his side were held to a 0-0 draw by Crystal Palace.

We're going to fight as usual for the title." We did a good game." "We created more and conceded few.

Pep Guardiola didn't use any substitutes in a dominant, but goalless, draw against Palace that left the door further ajar for a chasing Liverpool.

They have given Liverpool a huge incentive for Wednesday's trip to Arsenal, knowing that victory there in their game in hand will take them one point behind City with nine games each to play. As it was, Guardiola didn't make a single substitution in a game City had to win to maintain a degree of breathing space over Liverpool, the holder's lead standing at four points now. But it is tempting on nights like this -- as rare as they are -- to imagine what might have happened here had City landed Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Kane or Cristiano Ronaldo last summer. The result inevitably shapes judgements on such decision-making, but that just felt odd in the immediate aftermath. If he really was thinking about changing things, it never seemed particularly close to becoming reality. City peppered Palace's goal with 18 shots.