After Matchday 6, there is only one remaining undefeated team in the Premier League. This was a likely result, as the last two teams without losses played each other (sure, it could've ended in a draw, but for this exercise I'm going to ignore that). Liverpool, winners of ridiculous matches courtesy of late winners, had been not just undefeated but perfect heading into its Saturday showdown at Selhurst Park with Crystal Palace, the most recent team to beat Liverpool, doing so in the Community Shield back in August. Palace hadn't been perfect at all; through its first five league matches, it had drawn three times, and not against top competition (Chelsea, sure, but also messy Nottingham Forest and newly promoted Sunderland). After 90 minutes in South London, though, the only team to still not taste Premier League defeat is Crystal Palace, and though Liverpool almost loaded up some of its 2025-26 magic to salvage a point, this was a well-deserved victory for the Premier League's sole remaining Invincible.
There's no hyperbole when I say this: Palace beat the ever-loving hell out of Liverpool on Saturday. Were it not for Liverpool goalie Alisson—still blameless!—this match might have been not just a win but a blowout. The front three of Jean-Philippe Mateta, Ismaïla Sarr, and new signing Yéremy Pino were all over Liverpool's shoddy backline from the opening whistle, and the early goal was always coming. In the ninth minute, Sarr turned that prophecy into reality, converting a failed corner-kick clearance into a deserved goal:
Facing its first deficit of the season, Liverpool didn't really wake up, and Palace kept attacking as if it were the more heralded team. Manager Oliver Glasner deserves a lot of credit for how good Palace has been during his tenure, and he deserves even more for Saturday's gameplan. Liverpool's defense has been overrun repeatedly this season, a flaw that its late goals had papered over, but Palace exploited it repeatedly, and I would not have been surprised if the hosts had been up three or four goals by halftime. I said Alisson was blameless, but that undersold it; if not for the Brazilian, it would have been an insurmountable Palace lead. A couple of minutes after Sarr's opener, Alisson had to make a perfect low save off a Palace counter attack, and he pulled off a similar save against his own momentum in the 22nd.
Palace didn't really let off, though, ceding possession but hitting repeatedly on the counter and finishing with four more shots than Liverpool in the first 45 minutes. If anything, Palace might have felt like it had wasted opportunities to truly kill the Liverpool monster before it could roar to life, such was the Eagles' domination in the first half. The second, on the other hand, looked more like what you would've expected coming into the game, with Liverpool controlling the ball and actually pushing Palace back in search of an equalizer. It didn't come for a long time, as almost every Liverpool player struggled in one way or another to convert all that possession into chances.
Though I believe that most of the slander that has come Florian Wirtz's way during his slow start to life in the Prem hasn't quite been fair, it is nevertheless true that the German newcomer had a nightmare on Saturday, and his fellow new signings Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong weren't much better. (Somehow, Liverpool still looks best when Dominik Szoboszlai plays right back.) Mohamed Salah continued his muted start to the season with another anonymous performance, and Alexander Isak was similarly harmless at the tip of the attack. (Hugo Ekitike's braindead red card mid-week in the League Cup, which saw him suspended for the Palace match, was certainly felt once it became clear Isak didn't have "it" on Saturday.)
Still, though, this version of Liverpool thrives on drama, and substitute Federico Chiesa provided yet another important late goal. Chiesa already had a late winner under his belt from the opening day against Bournemouth, and he seemed to have rescued a point for Liverpool on Saturday, latching onto a poorly cleared cross from Ryan Gravenberch—who was perhaps the only outfield Pool Boy to not crap the bed on Saturday—and driving it past an excellent Dean Henderson into the goal in the 87th minute:
The thing about a penchant for the dramatic though is that it can blow up in your face quite, well, dramatically, which is what happened to Liverpool. Deep into stoppage time—so deep that Liverpool manager Arne Slot complained about it, which was silly—Palace pulled a Pool Boys and snatched three points off a long throw-in, of all things. In the 97th minute, Eddie Nketiah stood his ground on the left side of the box while the ball pinballed around, eventually falling to his chest. A perfect touch down to his left foot and a vicious volley later, and Palace had won the damn game:
Thanks to its aforementioned three draws, the undefeated Palace doesn't sit at the top of the table; Liverpool still has that perch, and Arsenal is in second, thanks to its own last-gasp winner against Newcastle on Sunday. But Palace has now gone undefeated in 18 straight matches across all competitions, and the team that we traditionally slot into 12th place at the start of each season has looked every bit as good as its current third-place spot. Ever since Glasner took over the side in February of 2024, this type of performance has become almost commonplace in South London. The Austrian has guided Palace to its best-ever points total in the Premier League (53 in 2024-25), as well as its first major trophy ever, beating Manchester City in last season's FA Cup final. Even though the club lost star attacker Eberechi Eze to Arsenal before this season (a year after losing Michael Olise to Bayern), Glasner's system, and the combined efforts of Mateta, Pino, and Sarr, have made it so that the Eagles haven't missed a beat in attack, and the defense has only given up three goals in six matches (in retrospect, keeping Marc Guéhi instead of selling him to Liverpool was even bigger than it seemed at the time).
Now, I'm not saying that Palace should be thought of as a real contender for the European spots. It's too early, and the table is too weird in this nascent stage—Sunderland is in fifth, for goodness sake—to make any sweeping predictions. But the quality of play that Glasner's side has displayed this season, and especially the way it dominated Liverpool for 45 minutes before knocking the reigning champions out so late, looks like something that should continue as long as everyone stays healthy. Also, this team is just fun to watch, and not even in the "oh this underdog is playing well" sense. In Glasner's 3-4-2-1 formation, Palace has the ability to flood the midfield and backlines with forward-minded players, but it can also hunker down in defense when needed. (This is the same formation that Manchester United runs under Ruben Amorim, which should put to rest the notion that any particular formation is either foolproof or doomed.) This is just a well-coached team with plenty of talent that, as Liverpool found on Saturday, can beat anyone at any time. So far this season, no one has been able to crack Glasner's puzzle long enough to actually beat Crystal Palace, and with Everton and Bournemouth next on the docket, it wouldn't be a shock if Palace rolls into a London showdown against Arsenal on Oct. 26 still undefeated. Not bad for the 12th-place heroes, not bad at all.
