Man City breeze past Crystal Palace to keep pressure on Arsenal in title race

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Pep Guardiola took a gamble and won - to help Manchester City keep alive their fading hopes of beating Arsenal to the title. Guardiola chose to rest a host of superstars for the visit of Crystal Palace - and a game City had to win.

And he saw Phil Foden , Omar Marmoush and Savinho come in from the cold, to inspire a comfortable triumph that turned the heat back on Mikel Arteta's league leaders.

Foden set up two goals, including one for Marmoush, after Antoine Semenyo had opened the scoring to help City close the gap at the top to just two points.

Guardiola named the sort of side which suggested he'd given up catching Arsenal in the title race. With the FA Cup final against Chelsea in mind, he left Erling Haaland , Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki on the bench.

Mikel Arteta must have been dancing a jig of joy in front of his TV screen at home. It was a bold call from Guardiola, considering a win here would have piled the pressure back on the league leaders.

Palace, meanwhile, had other priorities as well, in the shape of the Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano, when Oliver Glasner hoped to leave on a high with a second trophy.

But despite thoughts drifting to other games, this remained a huge one for the home side. One slip from Arsenal down the home straight would offer City the chance to pip them to the post.

And whatever team Guardiola put out, it should have been good enough to beat Palace. But Palace made a bright start to rock their rivals. Jean-Phillipe Mateta thought he'd scored inside two minutes, but was denied by an off-side in the build up.

Yeremy Pino shot wide following another sharp break from Palace, before Chaos Richards headed just over. All a lacklustre City could offer in the opening exchanges was a diabolical shot from Marc Guehi, which was so bad it went for a throw in.

Abdukodir Khusanov also tried his luck, but all he could do was fire high into the stands. Rayan Ait-Nouri then shot into the side netting. City needed a moment of magic to lift them, and it came from Foden in the 32nd minute.

There seemed to be nothing on when Matheus Nunes rolled a pass to him, but Foden's sublime backheel to Semenyo allowed the Ghanian to beat Dean Henderson with an angled strike into the bottom corner.

Tyrick Mitchell could have equalised within 60 seconds, but was denied by Gianluigi Donnarumma.

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Marmoush should have doubled City's advantage at the opposite end, but he took too long to decide what to do and allowed Maxence Lacroix to dispossess him.

But Marmoush made amends moments later, taking a pass from Foden before swivelling to drill a shot past the helpless Henderson. Guardiola clenched his fist in delight. He knew the game was over as a contest.

He also knew leaving almost £400m worth of talent on the sidelines wasn't going to cost him.

The challenge remaining for City was to see how much they could boost their goal difference by, in the slim hope it would make a difference come the end of the season.

But Henderson denied Josko Gvardiol with a word class save, while Bernardo Silva curled a shot wide. Glasner made a triple substitution, in a bid to breathe some life into the visitors.

But Palace remained lifeless, meaning City didn't have to get out of second gear to cruise to the final whistle.