Manchester City’s Premier League title defence has taken another hit with a 2-2 draw at Crystal Palace.
Four-time defending champions City ended a seven-game winless run on Wednesday by beating Nottingham Forest, but they dropped more points with the draw at Selhurst Park on Saturday.
But it could have been worse for City after Palace led twice.
Pep Guardiola’s team are fourth in the standings and eight points behind leaders Liverpool, who have a game in hand after their derby with Everton had to be postponed due to a storm.
Aston Villa are fifth after they beat last-placed Southampton 1-0, while Brentford beat Newcastle 4-2.
A win would have lifted City to second and cut the gap to Liverpool to six points, but they were behind after just four minutes when Daniel Munoz scored for Palace.
Erling Haaland levelled by halftime with a header – his 12th league goal of the season – but Maxence Lacroix restored Palace’s lead in the 56th.
Rico Lewis equalised again for City in the 68th but was then sent off six minutes from the end after a second yellow card.
“I like everything about my team, when we’re in the situation we’re in,” Guardiola said.
“We have a lot of problems within the squad. We fought incredible, we gave everything, we take the point.”
Ruben Amorim is getting an idea of just how big a job he has on his hands at Manchester United after a second straight loss.
United were beaten by Nottingham Forest 3-2 at Old Trafford, with goalkeeper Andre Onana’s second-half blunder proving costly.
At 1-1, Onana misjudged Morgan Gibbs-White’s tame shot from outside the box two minutes after the break. He dived the wrong way to gather the ball and watched it roll in.
Forest led through Nikola Milenkovic’s header in the second minute, and Rasmus Hojlund equalising for United.
After Onana’s error, Chris Wood made it 3-1 to Forest, and Bruno Fernandes pulled a goal back for the home team.
Amorim tasted his first defeat as the United manager on Wednesday, a 2-0 to Arsenal.
After an eight-game winless run, Villa now have back-to-back victories and are just two points behind City.
Jhon Duran’s goal in the 24th minute was enough for all three points against Southampton at Villa Park and followed Wednesday’s win against Brentford.
Duran has been a super sub for Villa but this time scored on his first league start this season. He has nine goals in all competitions, five of them as a substitute.
Southampton are bottom of the standings and now eight points adrift of safety.
There are problems at super-rich Newcastle too, as they’ve gone four games without a win following the defeat to Brentford.
In a thrilling first half at the Gtech Community Stadium in London, Bryan Mbeumo opened the scoring for the home team before Alexander Isak equalised for Newcastle.
Yoane Wissa made it 2-1 to Brentford, but Harvey Barnes equalised again.
Nathan Collins put Brentford ahead again 11 minutes into the second half, and Kevin Schade ensured Newcastle were beaten by making it 4-2 in the 90th minute.
© AAP