Manchester City sink Crystal Palace through Erling Haaland penalty

There was a sense of genuine relief for Manchester City at the end of this awkward, chilly, oddly indigestible afternoon in south east London. Erling Haaland, scorer of the only goal, could be seen beating his chest wildly, the City players hugging eagerly.

A 1-0 win with a goal from the spot against a Crystal Palace team that hasn’t won at Selhurst Park since October is hardly the stuff of the springtime cavalry charge. But sometimes these games just need to be won, and City managed to do so here despite fielding a depleted team, with no natural width in the full-back areas and a notable lack of pep and fizz in their attacking combinations.

John Stones was back from a hamstring injury to start for the first time since January, and was part of a what looked, on paper, like a four-man centre back lineup. In practice Stones seemed at first to be playing in midfield, but this was the Pep-issue fullback version of midfield, creating an overload in the centre in possession, but an orthodox right-back out of it, which wasn’t very often here.

The absence of Kyle Walker from the starting XI was the other side of Stones’ return. City had a rare fallow week before this game, albeit a portion of that time will have been taken up with managing the fallout from Walker’s recreational mishap on the team’s day off. Pep Guardiola had offered up a slightly jarring line in standing-by-your-guy before this game, with talk of the modern world, this kind of thing being the price we pay. In the real world flashing in a bar is a little more of a problem. Hopefully someone within the club has spoken a little more seriously to their employee.

The word from the dressing room was that Walker was simply rotated out of the team. But it did leave City