Maresca’s City Faces Palace Test After Mixed Start
Enzo Maresca’s Premier League story with Manchester City opened with three points, but not total conviction. Now comes a very different test: a Friday night trip to Selhurst Park, where the noise rarely drops and patience can evaporate quickly.
City edged past Bournemouth 2-1 on the opening weekend, a scoreline that flattered the visitors more than the champions-in-waiting. Maresca’s side dominated the ball with 66% possession, generated 2.36 xG and fired six shots on target, yet they had to wait until the 84th minute to finally break through. Control was there. Ruthlessness was not.
Crystal Palace, by contrast, walked away from their first game with nothing but frustration. A 2-0 defeat to Everton looks routine on paper; the underlying numbers tell a different story. Palace produced an xG of 2.04 to Everton’s 1.16 and still failed to score. The chances were there. The finish was missing.
Palace’s cutting edge goes missing
That blunt edge is easier to understand when you glance at the teamsheet. Ismaila Sarr, last season’s top scorer and the man who dragged Palace through so many tight games, never made it onto the pitch. A groin injury kept the Liverpool-linked winger out of the squad, stripping the Eagles of their most reliable goal threat.
Sarr hit 21 goals in all competitions last season. You don’t simply replace that overnight. His absence, alongside defender Chadi Riad on the treatment table, leaves Palace lighter at both ends of the pitch just as last season’s Premier League runners-up arrive in town.
The timing is awkward. Since that famous 2025 FA Cup final win over City, Palace have paid heavily for it. Two meetings, two 3-0 defeats. In the league, they haven’t beaten City since October 2021 and have managed just two wins in their last 22 clashes with the Manchester club.
The wider picture isn’t kinder. Palace are eight Premier League games without a win, a barren run stretching back to the end of the 2025-26 campaign. Selhurst Park can turn into a cauldron when the team is flying. When the results dry up, tension creeps in.
City’s away form offers a glimmer
Yet this isn’t an invincible City machine rolling into south London. Maresca inherits a squad of serial winners, but their away form has already shown signs of softening. City have won only four of their last 10 league matches on the road. For a side used to steamrolling grounds up and down the country, that is a notable drop.
Team news adds another wrinkle. Jeremy Doku, the explosive left-winger who can tear open deep defences, is unlikely to feature as he recovers from a calf issue. Maresca loses a key outlet against a Palace side likely to sit compact and counter.
There is, however, fresh firepower available. Ayyoub Bouaddi, the £86 million signing unveiled earlier this week, is ready for selection. Maresca has confirmed the highly rated midfielder is in contention, and his inclusion would give City a different kind of threat between the lines, especially against a team that may spend long spells without the ball.
Early-season stakes for Maresca
Strip away the numbers and the narrative is clear. For Palace, this is about stopping the slide and proving that their FA Cup triumph over City wasn’t a one-off high before a long, slow decline. For City, it’s about establishing that the post-Pep Guardiola era can still be relentless.
Maresca knows what back-to-back league wins would buy him. Breathing space. Control of the story. Beat Bournemouth, then Palace, and the talk of whether he can live in Guardiola’s shadow quietens, at least for a while.
The bookmakers still lean heavily towards the visitors. BOYLE Sports price City at 8/13 (1.61) to take all three points, with Palace out at 15/4 (4.75). The odds say routine away win. The recent away record, the missing stars and the Selhurst atmosphere suggest it might not be that simple.
One week into the season, this already feels like a night that will say plenty about where both clubs are heading.
