Next Saturday, 20th of December 2014, a highly motivated Manchester City will entertain an extremely inconsistent Crystal Palace at Etihad Stadium for round 17 of the English Premier League, on a match that the home side wants to win in order to put some extra pressure on the league leaders, Chelsea, that only play their next match on Monday.

The win over the all-powerful Bayern Munich later last month woke up the giant that had been sleeping for far too long at the heart of the current Premier League champions and after that particular clash, Manchester City have won all the matches they took part in. Last weekend, the Citizens granted a complicated win at King Power Stadium over Leicester and maintained the three point difference to José Mourinho’s Blues, who are currently at the top of EPL table. Although some might argue that the Citizens aren’t as strong as they were last season, it is fair to mention that, despite some less impressive performances, Manchester City are having a very positive season, as so far they’ve managed to book their place on the next stage of the UEFA Champions League and are currently on the second place of the English Premier League. Manuel Pellegrini’s boys managed to bounce back from a very negative period when they lost three of four matches they took part in ,including two home defeats for different competitions against CSKA Moscow and Newcastle, but now they seem ready to defy Chelsea’s “hegemony” at the top of the table, a desire that was fueled by the Blues’ defeat at St. James’ Park two weeks ago.

For the apparently easy match against Crystal Palace next Saturday, Manuel Pellegrini will most certainly not be able to rely on the contribution of several important footballers such as Dzeko, Kompany, Aguero and Jovetic, all sidelined due to injury.

As for Crystal Palace, after the shaky league start, the Eagles have been trying by all means possible to achieve some peace of mind, which would come from finding a comfortable position on the league table, but so far they have been experiencing several difficulties to achieve such thing. After losing at home to Aston Villa earlier last month, Crystal Palace granted two draws from the following matches, one at White Hart Lane against Tottenham and another one at home with Stoke City last weekend. The upcoming match against Manchester City is probably not the best one to return to wins but the Eagles will certainly try to counter the English Champions’ favouritism and to cause them a major upset. For that particular clash, Neil Warnock will most certainly not be able to rely on Zaha, Chamakh and Mariappa’s contribution, since all of them are currently sidelined due to injury.

Manchester City

Stats: W-5 L-0 D-0

Recent Form - WWWWW

Crystal Palace

Stats: W-1 L-1 D-3

Recent Form - DDLDW

Possible Line-ups

Manchester City (4-2-3-1) – Hart - Sagna - Mangala - Demichelis - Clichy - Fernando - Touré - Nasri - Lampard - Silva - Pozo

Crystal Palace (4-3-3) – Speroni - Ward - Dann - Hageland - Kelly - Jedinak - McCarthy - Ledley - Bolasie - Puncheon - Campbell

Prediction

Manchester City 2 Crystal Palace 0