Crystal Palace FC vs Manchester City FC

Nine meetings, six Manchester City wins, three draws, and no Crystal Palace victory anywhere in the run. That is the headline, and the qualification underneath it is that two of those three draws came at Selhurst Park.

The sequence: City won 3-0 in Manchester on 13 May 2026; 3-0 at Selhurst Park on 14 December 2025; 5-2 in Manchester on 12 April 2025; a 2-2 at Selhurst on 7 December 2024; City 4-2 in south London on 6 April 2024; a 2-2 in Manchester on 16 December 2023; City 1-0 at Selhurst on 11 March 2023; City 4-2 at home on 27 August 2022; and a 0-0 at Selhurst on 14 March 2022. Thirty-four goals across the nine.

Split by venue and the picture sharpens considerably. The four played in Manchester produced 3-0, 5-2, 2-2 and 4-2 — twenty goals in four matches, five a game, with City winning three. The five at Selhurst Park produced 3-0, 2-2, 4-2, 1-0 and 0-0: fourteen goals in five, 2.8 a game, City winning three and drawing two.

Palace have scored four goals in those five home meetings and kept a single clean sheet. This is a fixture in which the home side has been consistently competitive and consistently short — nine attempts, nine failures to win, but three of them close enough to take a point and two of those at this ground.

Manchester City finished 2025/26 second on 78 points, twenty-three wins, nine draws and six defeats, with 77 scored and 35 conceded. Seven points behind Arsenal, and comfortably clear of everyone else — Manchester United in third were seven further back.

The away record is strong without matching the champions'. On the road City were 9-6-4 for thirty-three points, scoring 32 and conceding 21, the second-best away return in the division behind Arsenal's thirty-eight. Nine away wins, but also six away draws, a detail that matters a great deal against an opponent with Palace's profile.

Crystal Palace finished fifteenth on 45 points, 11-12-15 with 41 scored and 51 conceded. Twelve draws, and the venue split is one of the odder ones in the division: at Selhurst Park they were 4-9-6 for twenty-one points, while away from home they were 7-3-9 for twenty-four. Palace collected more points on the road than at their own ground last season.

Nine home draws in nineteen matches is the single most relevant Palace number here. They won four home matches all season and drew nine of them, scoring nineteen and conceding twenty-three. That is a side that neither wins at home nor gets beaten there easily — the classic profile of a team that frustrates. Their closing run was L-D-L-D-L; City ended L-D-W-W-D. Neither carries into late August with any weight.

Start with the quality gap, which is not in dispute. Thirty-three points more across last season, seventy-seven goals against forty-one, and six wins in nine head-to-head meetings with no defeats. City are a substantially better team and the price reflects that rather than overstating it.

The second is City's away record. Thirty-three points from nineteen road matches, thirty-two goals scored and twenty-one conceded, and only four away defeats. Against a home side that won four of nineteen, that is the dominant structural fact of this fixture.

The third is the draw risk, and it is the reason this pick is not rated higher. Palace drew nine of nineteen at Selhurst Park last season; City drew six of nineteen away. Both of those are among the highest rates in their respective columns, and this fixture has already produced two draws at this ground inside the last five meetings, including a 0-0. When the two most likely ways to lose a bet are a home win and a draw, and the home win is close to impossible while the draw is close to routine, the draw is the whole risk.

The fourth is the goal environment at Selhurst Park, which argues for a narrow result rather than a comfortable one. Palace's home matches last season produced forty-two goals in nineteen, 2.21 a game, and the five meetings here in this run averaged 2.8. City won 1-0 here in March 2023 and 3-0 in December 2025; the range of plausible scorelines is wide.

The fifth is the calendar. This is matchday two of a new season, City's first away fixture of the campaign after opening at home, and Palace's first home match after starting on the road. Neither side has a form line, and early-season away trips to well-organised mid-table opponents are historically where the big clubs drop the points they later regret.

Our pick is Manchester City FC to win at 1.52, rated medium confidence. City have won six of the last nine meetings and lost none, they took thirty-three points from nineteen away matches last season with only four defeats, and Crystal Palace FC won four of nineteen at Selhurst Park across the whole campaign.

The confidence stops at medium for one specific reason. Palace drew nine home matches last season and City drew six away, and two of the three draws in this head-to-head sequence came at this ground — a 2-2 and a 0-0. The outcome that beats us is not a Palace win, which nine consecutive meetings suggest is remote; it is the 1-1 that both of these sides produce more often than almost anyone else in their respective situations. If your risk tolerance demands it, a small-stakes draw is the sensible insurance here.

Backing City at this price is still the right side of the market. Palace scored nineteen goals in nineteen home matches last season, which is not a rate that beats a defence that conceded twenty-one on the road.

Watch the margin rather than the winner. The three City victories at Selhurst Park in this run finished 3-0, 4-2 and 1-0, and the two matches they failed to win here finished 2-2 and 0-0. Three different kinds of away win and two different kinds of stalemate, from a ground where nothing about the scoreline is predictable except that Palace do not come out on top. The variable is Palace's own output — exactly a goal a game at home last season, and four across the five meetings here.