Oliver Glasner explained he took advantage of Manchester City's lack of high-intensity runs and short sprinting distances, Crystal Palace in the top quarter of the league for those metrics.
Glasner's side continued their recent good form with a 2-2 draw against Manchester City at the weekend, where the home team perhaps even could have got a win. He conceded they could have got more, but explained that he could live with the result. He was happy with his side’s display at Selhurst Park.
“We don’t feel unlucky, but yes it was a good performance,” said the Austrian manager. “I think we can do better – I know the players, I see them in training. [There were] many, many positive things today.
Have teams learned how to combat City?
"It feels, having led twice, we had moments of being too passive and City is too long in this attacking third with moving the ball, it’s just a question of time where they create chances, because the second goal is just ‘wow’, how they play in these situations.
"And then we had many more other situations for transitions where we lost the ball too quickly, too easily and this is what we have to improve.”
"We started excellent, we scored a fantastic goal, of course, then also City had two, three chances. But overall, it was a good performance, it’s a great week for us, being unbeaten.”
Glasner explained how his team approached the game, having seen how other teams successfully operated against the reigning champions. “City have so much possession in every single game, but they are lowest in high-intensity runs and sprinting distances, and we are fifth or sixth in the league.
"And also the games they [Man City] lost this season, they lost against teams who have high intensity - Bournemouth, Tottenham and Brighton.”
“We were talking about it, that this is a strength of us. The intensity, the runs we can make in behind with our wing-backs, with the strikers. We thought that this could help us to win because beating City with possession is not too easy – I don’t know many teams who can do this, so then you have to find different things and one is intensity, and one is set-plays. This worked quite well.”
Although Palace could have scored more, Glasner feels the result reflected the game in terms of creating opportunities. “We have to be fair, they had two big chances, from [Erling] Haaland, a great save from Dean [Henderson] and [Ilkay] Gundogan hitting the post.
"We had two or three as well, so I think it was a very interesting game for all of us. And in the second half, it was a little bit more, it was not so up and down, because we lost the ball too quickly in the transition. Also many situations because City did it really well, but then we got our moments and we scored from it. Overall I think the result is a fair result.”
The draw follows a 0-1 win at Ipswich in midweek and Palace is now unbeaten in four games. The match against Man City was another sign that Palace is going in the right direction.
“Yes, it’s a confirmation with the result, I think the performance in many games were [already] okay and we played quite well. We have some issues that we know, in every single game, also when we lost, we created chances enough to score goals to win.
"Today it also helps us to score two again. And we get more and more stable in defending as the system gets clearer and clearer, especially for the new players. It goes in the right direction.
“But we are still in the bottom part of the table, and this is not where we want to be. So it’s still: keep going, working hard, try to improve and be open and be not satisfied. So we stay hungry, stay ambitious, and then we go in the right direction.”
