LONDON (Reuters) -Manchester City’s Rico Lewis bagged a second-half goal before being shown a red card in the dying minutes as his struggling team could only manage a point in a 2-2 Premier League draw with Crystal Palace at a wet and windy Selhurst Park on Saturday.
Erling Haaland also scored for Pep Guardiola’s City, who have just one victory in their last six league games and remained fourth in the league standings on 27 points after 15 games. Palace are four points above the drop zone in 16th.
“We take a point. We fought incredible and came back twice,” Guardiola told BBC Sport. “It’s a season to suffer. We’ll see what happens in the last months.
“We tried. Big compliment for the opponent. We cannot talk about the title race when we lose four games in a row and draw. We have to do more games to be consistent. It’s difficult in the situation we have. I’m really pleased for the players — they fought and did everything.”
City were shaky at the back early on and Daniel Munoz got Palace on the scoresheet in the fourth minute when he latched onto a pass from Will Hughes and slotted it into the far corner past Stefan Ortega.
The German keeper, who started in place of Ederson for the third successive game, will rue not stopping Munoz’s shot after managing to get a hand on it.
City equalised in the 30th minute when Haaland leapt to head home Matheus Nunes’s long cross into the far corner. His 13th league goal of the season drew him level with the league’s top scorer Mohamed Salah of Liverpool.
Maxence Lacroix put Palace ahead against the run of play in the 56th minute when he leapt, completely unmarked, to head in Hughes’ corner.
But City drew level again in the 68th when Bernardo Silva threaded a beautiful through ball to Lewis, who emphatically fired home for his first goal of the season and third league goal of his career.
City were reduced to 10 men in the 84th minute after Lewis picked up his second yellow for a tackle on Trevoh Chalobah. Guardiola made an angry beeline for the officials after the final whistle to argue the decision.
City were coming off a thoroughly dominant 3-0 home victory over Nottingham Forest which marked a return to winning ways after what had been a tough run of results, but the celebration was short-lived.
“With Man City it’s always two points lost,” City midfielder Silva said. “One point is better than zero but we’re not happy at the moment. We know our situation with injuries. Coming to Crystal Palace is never easy but we have to do better.
“When I finish a game and I get a point I’m not happy. It’s not the way we built this team, it’s not our standard.”
If the draw felt like a loss for City, the feeling was far different for Palace, who finished the week unbeaten after a mid-week draw with Newcastle United.
“We are pleased with the point and many parts of the performance. It feels like if we’d performed at our best level we could have won the game,” said Palace boss Oliver Glasner.
“An unbeaten week with draws against Newcastle and Manchester City, everything is fine. We want to improve and get better in some situations and we could win those games.”
Guardiola’s side squandered several other chances including an early point-blank shot from Haaland that Palace keeper Dean Henderson stopped with the side of his face, and then was down for several minutes receiving treatment before continuing.
Ilkay Gundogan also fired a long shot off the post in the first half.
(Reporting by Lori Ewing; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
