Manchester City are playing right now against Crystal Palace which is defending with 7 players and sometimes with the whole team, yet Grealish managed to score a goal after VAR verification. If he was like 1 cm in advance it would be disallowed and that goal might be a discussion subject.
Manchester City are pushing and Foden shot was so close. Meanwhile, Ederson deserved a red card instead of the yellow card he received! He was targeting the foot of the player and he was lucky the attack was in the side otherwise he will get red carded.
Manchester City are playing way better and the full defence tactic of Crystal Palace is useless in my opinion.
If you watch closely, Crystal palace are not that useless as you put it, looking at the way the game has been going this first half, Crystal palace have been defending no doubt, but they've also have a brilliant counter attack formula they've been using lead by olise, and it has helped them to create some sort of threat at the Manchester city defence line a little bit. No doubt about the fact that Manchester city have more fire power than them, however if it has been so easy for Manchester city, I believe the goals would have been more than one this first half.
If Manchester City can't score the second goal, they can't play comfortably until the end of the match. Crystal Palace are defending but they can score on the counter and keep City off balance. Crystal Palace are not playing well in their last games and they don't have a win, so I think City will win the game, but they still need to be careful on the counter.
Defensive teams are always dangerous against big teams. So I assume Pep is thinking about that and taking precautions, they won't want to lose points at home against such an opponent.