Crystal Palace 1-4 Manchester City: three goals in six minutes

Manchester City left London with four goals on the back of a performance worth about one and a half. Crystal Palace took nine shots, one of them on target, and scored once - through the opposition goalkeeper. The 1-4 reads as a rout, and by the end it was one, but the numbers describe a match that stayed level for longer than the scoreboard remembers.

Six minutes that settled it

The score was 1-0 until the fifty-fourth minute. Erling Haaland scored on seventeen, and for nearly forty minutes after that nothing followed. Then three goals arrived together: Rayan Cherki on fifty-four, a Gianluigi Donnarumma own goal on fifty-six, Cherki again on fifty-nine. Inside six minutes, 1-0 had become 3-1.

Haaland added the last on eighty-four for his brace, closing the match at the same end where he had opened it. Sixty-seven minutes separated his two goals, and everything that mattered happened between them.

The home side's only goal came off the away keeper

Crystal Palace put one shot on target across ninety minutes. Donnarumma saved it - his only save of the night. The only ball that ended up in his net, he put there himself on fifty-six.

The scoresheet credits Palace with one. In practice they scored none of their own: 0.57 expected goals across the match, nine attempts, six of them from inside the box, and not one that reached the net without help from the other side.

City scored four times what they created

1.45 xG and four goals is an overshoot of two and a half. That is not a measure of attacking quality but of finishing: City shot eighteen times, hit the target nine times and scored four, so nearly every second shot on target went in, against a normal rate closer to one in three.

Half of all attempts on target is unusual accuracy. Twelve of the eighteen came from inside the box, which explains how a modest xG turned into a heavy scoreline: the chances were not exceptional individually, but there were many and they were struck well.

Possession of 72-28 and what sat behind it

779 passes for City against 281 for Palace, at 92.6% accuracy against 82.2%. The hosts set up in a 3-4-2-1 and conceded the ball deliberately, spending most of the match without it.

The plan held exactly until the fifty-fourth minute. Three offsides for Palace against none for City show what they were trying in reply - balls in behind the defence - and that it never came off cleanly. Six corners to two, four saves for the Palace keeper against one for Donnarumma: the home goalkeeper worked four times as hard as his counterpart and still picked the ball out of his net four times.

What it means for both sides

City hold the recent head-to-head comfortably: three wins in the last four, the most recent a 3-0 in May. Palace have one.

For Palace the numbers are worse than the score. One shot on target across a match is not a poor day in front of goal, it is the absence of an attack; 0.57 xG confirms the chances never formed. The shape held 1-0 for forty minutes but offered nothing going forward, and the spell between fifty-four and fifty-nine dismantled it entirely.

For City the reading cuts both ways. Four goals from 1.45 xG is a fine evening and not a repeatable one: finishing at that rate does not hold over a season, and the next opponent facing the same one-and-a-half expected goals may well take points. The genuine positive is not the scoreline but the accuracy - nine shots on target from eighteen speaks to shot selection rather than luck.