Crystal Palace vs Manchester City Prediction - A Match Of The Utmost Importance For The Citizens

Next Monday, 6th of April 2015, a Manchester City in need of points will travel to Selhurst Park to measure forces with Crystal Palace for round 31 of the English Premier League.

The festive period did not bring any tasty Easter Egg for Manchester City, who saw both Chelsea and all their closest contenders win their respective matches over the weekend. Such results will force the current EPL champions to win their next Monday’s clash at Selhurst Park against a particularly complicated and unpredictable side such as the Eagles.

The Citizens have been proving to be an extremely inconsistent team so far this season and there are some pundits and supporters who blame the team’s manager, Manuel Pellegrini, for such a poor overall performance.

Manchester City lost three of the last five official matches they took part in last month and found themselves out of the UEFA Champions League at the hands of their usual executioners, Barcelona. The team’s recent performances have been particularly poor and, with the exception of their home matches against West Brom and Leicester, they have conceded at least one goal in four of their last six clashes.

Manuel Pellegrini will need to rally his troops and present some solid and quality performances for the remaining matches of the current season if he still wants to secure the second or the third place of table, something that would allow the team to take part in the UEFA Champions League next term.

As for Crystal Palace, it is fair to say that they have been a fairly different team after the arrival of Alan Pardew. The former Newcastle boss offered the Eagles the peace of mind they and been looking for and catapulted them to a more respectable position on the league table.

On EPL’s last round, the Eagles snatched a very important win at Stoke and secured their second win in a row after their triumph over QPR at Selhurst Park one week before.

Despite Crystal Palace's recent good moment, Manchester City are favourites to win next Monday’s fixture, but they will certainly need to dig deep in order to achieve that.

Crystal Palace

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

Recent Form - WWLWL

Manchester City

Stats: W-2 L-3 D-0

Recent Form - WLLWL

Possible Line-ups

Crystal Palace (4-2-3-1) - Speroni - Ward - Dann - Delaney - Souare - McArthur - Ledley - Zaha - Puncheon - Bolasie - Murray

Manchester City (4-4-2) – Hart - Zabaleta - Mangala - Kompany - Kolarov - Touré - Fernando - Nasri - Silva - Aguero - Bony

Injury List / Suspended Players

Crystal Palace

Jordon Mutch (inj)

Fraizer Campbell (inj)

Mile Jedinak (sus)

Manchester City

James Milner (inj)

Head-to-head matches:

Top Players:

Crystal Palace

James McArthur

Glenn Murray

Wilfried Zaha

Manchester City

Sergio Aguero

Yaya Touré

David Silva

Predictable Goal Scorers:

Crystal Palace

1. Dwight Gayle
2. Wilfried Zaha
3. Glenn Murray

Manchester City

1. Sergio Aguero
2. Edin Dzeko
3. Wilfried Bony

Half-Time Score

Crystal Palace 1 Manchester City 1

Full-Time Score

Crystal Palace 1 Manchester City 2