Manchester City vs Crystal Palace: Roy Hodgson won't be daunted by Pep Guardiola’s imperious side

While admitting the gap to the Premier league's top teams has increased, Hodgson said as long as football’s played on grass his Palace side have a chance

This Liverpool side are projected to be best team in Premier League history, their points per game average projecting them to 100.6 total points. That would beat the record of 100 points, set last season by Manchester City. Pep Guardiola’s side are currently heading for 98.4 points, a meagre total by comparison, but still higher than all but one of the 420 38-game Premier League seasons ever completed.

We are far enough into this season to say what is obvious: the best teams are better than ever, both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the competition. Matches between City and Liverpool and the ‘other 14’ are a mismatch, more often than not.

For years we have told ourselves that “anyone can beat anyone” in the Premier League but the evidence of this season suggests quite the opposite. Liverpool have lost no games, City only one, to Chelsea. Last season City lost two in the league, to Liverpool and Manchester United, and even that came after they should have been out of sight at half-time.

So what does that mean for the teams on the other end of the seesaw? Crystal Palace go to the Etihad Stadium tomorrow, 22/1 with some bookmakers to beat Pep Guardiola’s side. It presents an unusual challenge to Roy Hodgson - and to the other managers of his standing in the league - how do you play such a losing hand?

When asked about it at Palace’s training ground on Friday afternoon, Hodgson put a brave face on it and said that he did not treat it differently from any other game. But he did admit that the gap between the best and the rest is now bigger than it was even 10 years ago.

“I don’t know that there are enormous differences between today and last year, for example, and possibly even a year before,” Hodgson said. “If you want to go back 10 to 15 years then I definitely think it’s harder. There’s no question of that. The top teams, they lose fewer and fewer games, and at home they are often invincible. They are able to put together such good squads of players, and they employ such renowned and talented managers, because they have the world as their oyster.”

So how do you take on that invincibility? How do you try to find their Achilles heel? Hodgson made clear that he would treat this game like any other, even while accepting that the odds were stacked against his side. Whatever the likely outcome, the process must remain the same.

“I don’t think it should affect our work,” Hodgson insisted. “We have to prepare for every team we play. Before last Saturday’s game against Leicester, we had to make the players aware of the strengths of Leicester, where they’re likely to cause us the most problems, what we need to do to, to make certain the players feel comfortable going on the field to deal with those problems. Where perhaps we might place the best part of our eggs in order to try to dent their defences.”

Palace held City to a 0-0 draw last season (Getty)

“And nothing changes when you then play Manchester City. the preparation that you do is exactly the same. But then of course you come to the comparisons, which of those two teams will perhaps be the easier for you to get a good result against, and everyone will I’m sure agree it’s going to be Leicester because Man City and Liverpool are racing away with the league.”

So Hodgson accepts that Saturday’s game will be daunting, but he wants it to be daunting in the right way. A challenge for the players to meet, rather than one that will weigh them down.

“I understand the word ‘daunting’ and I think it’s probably a good word to use, but it depends how we, want to interpret it. Do we interpret it as: ‘we are certainly not the favourites here, we know we’re going to be up against it this afternoon, and we know to get a result here we have to pull something special out of the bag, we need some special moments or some special luck’? Or do we regard it as ‘daunting’ in the sense of being deflated in some way, of not feeling that this is a game that we want to be in and want to do something in. That won’t be us.”

Palace, after all, got a 0-0 draw with City on New Year’s Eve last year and should have won the game as they missed a late penalty. At this time of year, unlikely results can happen. “It won’t be easy but it’s far from impossible. The day it becomes impossible, the league might as well fold up and be played on paper. But it’s still played on grass.”