Man City coach Pep Guardiola will have to revisit classic Crystal Palace dilemma

Palace dilemma

If Manchester City lose on Saturday at Crystal Palace, their Premier League title hopes will take a dent but there will be many games to recover. If they lose on Tuesday at home to RB Leipzig, their Champions League hopes are over.

There is no reason why Pep Guardiola can't play exactly the same players for both games, but a manager who is known for changing his line-ups for specific opposition also respects that if the league may be more of a priority the European deadline is far more deadly. Even planning to play the same XI for both is a risk because of the unknowns that could happen at Selhurst Park, but that is why Guardiola has the career that he does.

He made a similar call a bit later on in the 2018/19 campaign, when he predicted that his best players wouldn't be able to play so many games in a short spell but chose to go weaker in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final rather than the league. City won at Crystal Palace and would go on to pip Liverpool to the title by a point, but could not overturn a 1-0 first-leg deficit against Tottenham in one of their most agonising exits from the competition.

When the team is revealed an hour before the game on Saturday the bigger picture will become clearer.

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Tough tests

Some teams seem more significant than others in City's calendar and Palace are certainly one. There have been a number of interesting and big meetings between the two in recent years, such as Manuel Pellegrini's win there in 2014 or the New Year's Eve stalemate in 2017 that ended the longest winning run in Premier League history.

Guardiola may well be hoping the smaller the fuss