Crystal Palace vs Man City result: Raheem Sterling double keeps Premier League title challenge on track

Is anyone going to give Manchester City a proper game? Certainly not Crystal Palace, and certainly not here. On a crisp, chilly afternoon in south London the champions continued their immaculate march towards consecutive Premier League titles in a game that was expertly kneecapped after 15 minutes and thereafter played largely at walking pace.

City have been making quite a habit of this of late: striking early, and then settling into their familiar holding pattern, preserving fuel for the bigger tasks ahead. In their last four wins, the first goal has come after five, six, four and here 15 minutes, with Raheem Sterling’s early strike, to which he added a second just after the hour.

For the long-suffering home fans there was a little late excitement, as Luka Milivojevic’s free-kick offered at least the illusion of a close finish. But in truth, City had done their work much earlier, and in extending their lead in the final minute through Gabriel Jesus, merely gave the distinct impression that they could have scored as many as they wanted, if only they had been fussed to do so.

It’s now been two months since we saw the best of City on the domestic stage, and the simple fact is that since the awesome 6-0 demolition of Chelsea in February they’ve scarcely needed to display it. You can’t really blame them for going through the motions a little, not when there are three trophies to be won, not when there’s immortality to be chased. But at times you long for a taste of what this team can really do, for a glimpse of their true ceiling. Trying to gauge the true form of this City side is like trying to judge a supercar by watching it negotiate the Croydon one-way system.

Partly that’s the awesome aura Pep Guardiola’s side have accumulated, an impregnability built up not over weeks, but years. Playing Guardiola’s City these days is as much an examination of nerve as anything else, a sense that you’re facing not merely the 11 sky-blue shirts on the pitch but their awesome reputation, the heaving weight of Guardiola’s trophy cabinet, the pure distillation of football they represent. Only Ferguson’s United, Mourinho’s Chelsea and Wenger’s Arsenal have cast this sort of shadow in the Premier League’s lifespan: the sort that beats teams before a ball has been kicked.

Palace certainly weren’t going to challenge them here. The ominous regimental drum beating in the Holmesdale End gave their efforts the feeling of a military siege, and before long the casualties were piling up. Jeff Schlupp limped off after 20 minutes. With Patrick van Aanholt having a shocking game at left-back, City were tearing up the flank with abandon. Kyle Walker was particularly good.

On the rare occasions Palace advanced, they looked like a team who expected to surrender possession the instant they got it. And so it was that after 15 minutes of pure City dominance, a rare Palace attack broke down and Kevin De Bruyne spotted that Van Aanholt wasn’t tracking the run of Sterling, threaded a fine through ball into the right channel.

There was still plenty of work for Sterling to do at that point. And yet even as the angle tightened, as Palace goalkeeper Vicente Guaita steadied himself, as Scott Dann closed in, even as you remembered that Sterling had missed a much simpler opportunity from eight yards just a few minutes earlier, there never seemed to be the slightest chance that Sterling would do anything but score.

It was his 16th league goal of the season, and the 17th wasn’t long in arriving: a flowing move that began with Walker and ended in the back of the net via Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Leroy Sane and a scuffed finish from Sterling, with not the hint of a Palace challenge at any stage. At one point - and we were quite a distance away, so it’s hard to be sure - Scott Dann may have given Silva a mean look. But that was about it.

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Sterling wheeled away not with the elation of the conqueror, but of the man who has simply done his job, celebrating in front of the City fans. Perhaps a more telling statistic than his goal total is that of the other leading contenders for this season’s Golden Boot - Aguero, Salah, Kane, Mane, Hazard - Sterling has taken fewest shots by far. Quietly, Sterling has turned himself into one of the most clinical finishers in English football.

With nine minutes left, Milivojevic found a gap in the City wall and tucked in a low free-kick to get Selhurst Park jumping again. But in a way, it was a blunder: the loss of a clean sheet just made City angry. With the seconds leaking away De Bruyne marshalled a four-on-two break and slipped in Jesus for City’s third goal.

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And so City’s London residency - this was their fourth game in the capital in two weeks, taking in Fulham, Tottenham and an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley - ended with a humdrum rendition of the hits rather than anything more experimental. As Tottenham showed in the Champions League on Tuesday night, City can be challenged, if you keep them at bay, make them work, bide your time and take your chances. But Palace were never going to be the team who managed it.