Manchester City 4-0 Crystal Palace - 6 Things We Learned

2. Time To Change Things Up

With goals so hard to come by, the players seem to run out of ideas and heart if things don't work out right away. Palace have one way of playing and, right now, it isn't working. They are going toe-to-toe and getting beaten up. Badly. Palace's impressive form over the last two seasons was built on their solid defence and maybe it's time to go back to basics. One thing a midfield partnership of Joe Ledley and Mile Jedinak would give the back four is protection, and that was lacking against City, with two goals coming from long range efforts and two goals scored on the counter. Alan Pardew seems reluctant to ever leave James McArthur, Jason Puncheon and Yohan Cabaye out despite their relative lack of form, yet Palace have not played well for five games and the starting line up has barely changed. Palace have a squad capable of playing in more than one way and Pardew needs to think about changing things up a bit more.