Manchester City’s Premier League title defense took another blow after a 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Four-time defending champion City ended a seven-game winless run on Wednesday by beating Nottingham Forest, but dropped more points with the draw at Selhurst Park.
It could have been worse for City after Palace led twice.
Pep Guardiola’s team is fourth in the standings and eight points behind leader Liverpool, which has a game in hand after its derby with Everton was postponed due to a storm.
Aston Villa was fifth after winning against last-placed Southampton 1-0, and Brentford beat Newcastle 4-2.
A win would have lifted City to second and cut the gap to Liverpool to six points, but it was behind after four minutes when Daniel Munoz scored for Palace.
Erling Haaland leveled by halftime with a header, but Maxence Lacroix restored Palace’s lead in the 56th.
Rico Lewis equalized again for City in the 68th and was sent off in the 84th for a second yellow card.
“I like everything about my team, when we’re in the situation we’re in,” Guardiola said. “We have a lot of problems within the squad. We fought incredible, we gave everything, we take the point.”
Honeymoon over
Ruben Amorim is getting an idea of just how big a job he has on his hands at Manchester United after a second straight loss.
United was beaten by Forest 3-2 at Old Trafford, with goalkeeper Andre Onana’s second-half blunder proving costly.
At 1-1, Onana misjudged Morgan Gibbs-White’s tame shot from outside the box two minutes after the break. He dived the wrong way to gather the ball and watched it roll in.
Forest led through Nikola Milenkovic’s header in the second minute, and Rasmus Hojlund equalizing for United.
After Onana’s error, Chris Wood made it 3-1 to Forest, and Bruno Fernandes pulled a goal back for the home team.
Amorim tasted his first defeat as the United manager on Wednesday, a 2-0 to Arsenal.
Villa wins
After an eight-game winless run, Villa has back-to-back victories and is just two points behind City.
Jhon Duran’s goal in the 24th held up for all three points against Southampton at Villa Park and followed Wednesday’s win against Brentford.
Duran has been a super sub for Villa but scored on his first league start this season. He has nine goals in all competitions, five of them as a substitute.
Southampton was bottom of the standings and eight points adrift of safety.
Newcastle routed
Newcastle has gone four games without a win after being routed by Brentford 4-2.
In a thrilling first half at Gtech Community Stadium, Bryan Mbeumo opened the scoring for the home team before Alexander Isak equalized for Newcastle.
Yoane Wissa made it 2-1 to Brentford, but Harvey Barnes leveled again.
Nathan Collins put Brentford ahead again 11 minutes into the second half, and Kevin Schade ensured Newcastle was beaten by making it 4-2 in the 90th.
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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
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