Aymeric Laporte Sees Red as Man City Suffer Heartbreaking EPL Home Defeat Against Crystal Palace

• Palace took the lead early on as Zaha capitalized on an error from the Manchester City defense
• City’s match took a turn for the worse at the stroke of half time when Ayneric Laporte was shown a straight red
• The visitors doubled their lead late on courtesy of Conor Gallagher, who rifled in off the post
• Defeat at home was a huge blow to City, who fall five points behind leaders Chelsea, who saw off Newcastle 3-0
• The loss also summed up a poor week for City, who were eliminated from the Carabao Cup

Manchester City took a major stumble in the Premier League title race as they succumbed to a shock 2-0 defeat to Patrick Viera’s Crystal Palace.

Pep Guardiola’s side got off to the worst possible start Palace nicked the ball high upfield for Conor Gallagher to feed a ball to Wilfired Zaha whose skewed shot found the back of the net.

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That was Zaha’s 50th goal in the Premier League and he became the first player to achieve that feat for Crystal Palace.

From then on, it was all City as Palace resorted to some resolute defending to keep out a series of attacks from the hosts.

As the half wore on, City found it difficult to break down the Palace defence as Joao Cancelo and Rodri tested Vicente Guaita from distance.

Things took a turn for the worse for Manchester City towards the end of the first half as they were reduced to 10 men following a foul by Aymeric Laporte on Zaha.

After an extensive spell of defending, Palace launched the ball forward in a rare attack and Zaha did superbly to control it but was eventually taken down by the French defender.

A review by the VAR confirmed the red card and City were forced to try claw back in the game while devoid of one man.

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Despite being down to 10 men, City continued to look for an equaliser in the second half and thought they had found it after Gabriel Jesus got at the end of a Phil Foden cross but VAR once again came to haunt the hosts as Foden was deemed to have been offside in the build up to the goal.

A second goal in the game came late on but against the odds, it came Crystal Palace’s way as another rare attack saw substitute Michael Olise square the ball to Conor Gallagher whose shot found the net off the post.

In truth, City did not look threatening enough and the defeat summed up a miserable week for Pep Guardiola, whose side was knocked out of the Carabao Cup less than 72 hours ago.