City were due a win against us, but I never thought we would put 2 past them in the first 45minutes. As for the disallowed 3rd goal, I’m not sure the keeper had control of the ball and Edouard wasn’t exactly lifting his leg to challenge the keeper.

It will be nice to play some lesser teams, because Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City in your first 4 games is pretty difficult.

Yes. That’s what happened. But Schlupp should have filled his position not Richards. Hughes for Schlupp. Every goal from 2-0 up was Richards playing too far back and allowing City to play into the strike zone. Except possibly Harland’s third. Also didn’t help having slow and lesser skilled players like Ayew up forward as the ball kept returning to Mitchell to deal with and that overstretched him causing his breakdown and retirement. Great first half performance though. But it was always an unbalanced side with players like Ayew up forward. Olise and Mateta with Eduard up forward would have given City something to be more wary about, and from 2-0 we could have routed them as they were trying to chase the game. Tactical incompetence cost us 3 points. And as for all the hyper positive dudes and their silver linings, my prediction next week is that we’ll be stung badly if we think it’s an easy 3 pointer.

Ayew plays on the opposite side to Mitchell, so how to can blame pressure on him is odd. Ayew was our only outball, he won the 2 corners our goals came from. He works harder than anyone else in the team, that's why he gets selected.

Ayew has a terrific work rate breaks up play and is an example to the other forwards. Unfortunately he doesn't score goals still until we find a player with a similar work rate he will be first choice for PV.

One more point

We looked comfortable in the first half which is quite an accolade considering who we were playing.
Other than a header over the bar from Foden, we did not really look troubled and looked organised and defended well.
Their goal early in the second half lifted them and Mitchell’s injury disrupted us.
What I couldn’t understand is why Bernardo Silva was given so much space to wreak havoc.
He was picking up the ball in yards of space and drifting in from the right with no real challenge.
He’s an excellent player but I couldn’t understand why we didn’t get tighter to him or try to force him down the line on his weaker right foot.
Most of their attacks seemed to stem from him and we never got to grips with him.
Unlike the first half we looked disorganised and lacking composure and Haaland exploited this to the full.

After a 2 hour drive home with time to reflect of todays game. The key point was the lack off attack, Eze had a good game but watched him enter the box then pass the ball backwards and it ended up going back to our defence. Anderson made a run all the way to their box with no outlet.
On a plus the gents who where sat next to the boy and I in Row BB, I applaud your efforts to wind up the Citeh fans, probably the best comedy duo I've seen for years.
And a special shout out to MH, who graciously got us the tickets. True Palace gent.

In my day, a Selfie was what you had when the wife didn't put out.