De Bruyne leads Manchester City comeback, Arsenal held by Brentford

Kevin De Bruyne inspired a Manchester City fightback from two goals down to beat Crystal Palace 5-2, while Arsenal's 1-1 draw with Brentford on Saturday edged Liverpool closer to the Premier League title.

In De Bruyne's first appearance at the Etihad Stadium since announcing his decade in Manchester will come to a close at the end of the season, the Belgian rolled back the years to save City's blushes.

Palace found themselves 2-0 up after 20 minutes as Eberechi Eze slotted home Ismaila Sarr's pass, before Chris Richards took advantage of poor City defending to head in from a corner.

Eze had a third goal narrowly ruled out for offside before De Bruyne stirred the City fightback.

The 33-year-old fired in a free-kick off the post before heading down for Omar Marmoush to level just three minutes later.

City were rampant after the break, as De Bruyne teed up Mateo Kovacic on 47 minutes to complete the comeback.

Goalkeeper Ederson provided his fourth Premier League assist of the season for James McAtee to make it 4-2, before Nico O'Reilly's sweet strike rounded off the scoring.

"The performance of Kevin as he has done for many, many years in many, many games, he played fantastic," said City manager Pep Guardiola. "He helped us to break this momentum that was not good."

Arsenal paid the price for having one eye on their Champions League quarterfinal against Real Madrid, as a 12th league draw of the season left them 10 points adrift of Liverpool, who could now seal a record-equaling 20th English top-flight title as early as next weekend, should they win their next two matches and Arsenal lose at Ipswich.

Elsewhere, Nottingham Forest's challenge for a Champions League place stumbled after a 1-0 defeat by Everton. Forest remain in third place, but have lost their last two games to allow the chasing pack back onto their heels.

Aston Villa closed to within three points of Forest and climbed into the top five after Unai Emery's substitutes secured a 3-0 victory at already-relegated Southampton, despite Marco Asensio having two penalties saved by Aaron Ramsdale.