Bernardo Silva frustration at 'two points lost' for Man City after draw with Crystal Palace

Pep Guardiola's side lose further ground in title race while Brentford continue fine home form with 4-2 win over Newcastle

Manchester City's English defender #82 Rico Lewis (L) celebrates after scoring his team second goal during the English Premier League football match between Crystal Palace and Manchester City at Selhurst Park in south London on December 7, 2024. (Photo by Glyn KIRK / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. /

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola talks to referee Chris Graham after the final whistle. PA

Rico Lewis scores for Manchester City in the 68th minute to make it 2-2. Getty Images

Referee Chris Graham shows a red card to Manchester City's Rico Lewis. PA

Palace's Maxence Lacroix celebrates after his 56th-minute goal. AFP

Crystal Palace defender Maxence Lacroix heads home to out his team 2-1 up. AFP

Manchester City striker Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring in the 30th minute to make it 1-1. PA

City's Erling Haaland heads home to make it 1-1. AP

Crystal Palace's Daniel Munoz, second left, celebrates after opening the scoring. AP

City striker Erling Haaland has a shot saved by Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson. PA

Kyle Walker and Erling Haaland of Man City argue after Daniel Munoz's goal for Palace. Getty Images

Bernardo Silva described Manchester City's 2-2 Premier League draw with Crystal Palace as “two points lost” despite the reigning champions twice fighting back from a goal down to earn a point at Selhurst Park.

City had the chance to go second in the table but failed to build on a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest in midweek, which had appeared to stop the rot for the English champions.

Pep Guardiola's men got off to the worst possible start at Selhurst Park when Daniel Munoz raced on to Will Hughes' pass to fire Palace in front after four minutes.

Erling Haaland's towering header from Matheus Nunes' cross brought City back level and took the Norwegian level with Liverpool's Mohamed Salah on 13 Premier league goals in the battle for the Golden Boot.

The visitors started the second half strongly but were hit with a sucker punch when Maxence Lacroix powered home Hughes' corner.

Rico Lewis found the top corner to level once more for City, but was then sent-off six minutes from time.

Fourth-placed City close to within eight points of leaders Liverpool – whose derby game against Everton was postponed due to safety concerns caused by Storm Darragh – but more dropped points is another blow to their chances of making it five consecutive titles.

“With Man City it's always two points lost,” said Silva. “One point is better than zero but we're not happy at the moment. We know our situation with injuries. Coming to Crystal Palace is never easy but we have to do better.

“When I finish a game and I get a point I'm not happy. It's not the way we built this team, it's not our standard.

“We know how tough it is to come here when we have all our squad and we're in top form. We have to do better, we have to react better to the second balls. We have to give them less opportunities on set pieces.

“We created a few chances and that wasn't our problem because we scored two.

“We're in December. We'd like to be in a different position. If we recover our players quickly we can always do it. But right now our concern is a different one. If we're fourth or fifth we have to look at winning the next game.

“The last month and a half have not been good enough.”

Bees sting sorry Magpies to maintain home comforts

Brentford climbed to sixth in the table as Kevin Schade struck his fourth goal in a week to cap a scintillating 4-2 win against Newcastle at the Gtech Stadium.

Eddie Howe’s side had twice fought back from a goal down when defender Nathan Collins was given space by a sleeping Magpies defence inside the box early in the second half to guide the ball into the corner and give the home side a lead that they would not relinquish.

Yet the manner in which Newcastle gifted goals to the hosts will have been cause for frustration. Harvey Barnes was guilty of losing possession to allow Yoane Wissa to put Brentford 2-1 up, an error for which he quickly atoned to make it 2-2.

Alexander Isak had earlier scored Newcastle’s first equaliser, heading in to cancel out Bryan Mbeumo’s eighth-minute opener and setting the tone for another thrilling, high-scoring home win for Thomas Frank’s side, capped by Schade’s strike in stoppage time.

“Really frustrating, we are really disappointed with the manner of goals we conceded,” said Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, whose team It''s not even individual mistakes, there's two or three actions I'm not happy with for each goal. We have to do better in those situations.

“We had control of the game in the first half, then it got away from us after the third goal. We looked like a good attacking unit, but we have to put it all together and it has led to inconsistent results.”

Brentford move up to sixth place on 23 points, four points off the top four and three ahead of the Magpies in 12th. “Very happy, it was a great performance in many ways,” said Bees manager Thomas Frank, whose team have the best home record in the division with seven wins out of eight games.

“The way we performed today physically and with quality against a very good Newcastle side, I am very proud of my players.”

Duran marks first league start with winner

Jhon Duran marked his first Premier League start of the season with the winner to earn Aston Villa a 1-0 victory over Southampton.

It was the first time Unai Emery's side have won back-to-back league games since September as they followed up their midweek success over Brentford.

Goals for Duran have dried up following his heroics off the bench in the early part of the season, but bottom side Southampton shot themselves in the foot again defensively to allow the Colombian to stroke home his first league goal since September.

Russell Martin's struggling side have taken just one point away from St Mary's and their miserable run continued as they failed to register a shot on target all game.

“We won and that's positive but the difficulties we had were in our expectation,” said Emery. “Over the 90 minutes we had chances to score more goals but sometimes they were dominating possession. Today we managed the game plan more or less to try to find the way to win.”