Erling Haaland: Man City’s ‘goalscoring monster’ is ‘spooking’ Premier League rivals

When Manchester City signed Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund this summer there were some critics who believed that the young Norwegian may struggle with the rigours of English football. Four games into his debut Premier League season the 22-year-old has already hit six goals, including his first City hat-trick in the 4-2 victory over Crystal Palace at the weekend.

After City triggered the £51m release clause in his Dortmund contract, Haaland has “loudly gone about silencing those who questioned his move to the Etihad Stadium”, said Alex Brotherton in the Manchester Evening News. With sceptics insisting that the “club and player were not a good fit”, you “don’t have to be a football expert” to know that there are “quite a few people out there with egg on their faces”.

Ian Wright, the former Arsenal and England striker, went as far to say that Pep Guardiola and City now have a “goalscoring monster” leading their attack. “He’s a monster – he’s a goalscoring monster,” Wright said on BBC’s Match of the Day. “For somebody that we were so excited to see, in a team like City he’s going to score loads of goals.”

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With his 19-minute hat-trick against Palace, Haaland has now scored 161 times in his past 148 starts for club and country.

He’s like an ‘alien’

After making his professional debut in 2017 as a 15-year-old for hometown club Bryne in Norway, Haaland then went to play for Molde, Red Bull Salzburg and Dortmund. Everywhere he’s played, including international football, he’s been a “goal machine and record breaker”, said the AFP news agency.

At Molde in Norway he scored 20 goals in 50 games then in Austria for Salzburg he netted 29 in 27, including a hat-trick on his European debut. Signing for German giants Dortmund in a €20m deal in December 2019, he tallied 86 goals in 88 matches and was the youngest player to chalk up 50 Bundesliga goals, reaching the milestone in just 50 games. At senior international level he has also excelled, scoring 20 goals in 21 appearances for Norway.

These staggering numbers made him the world’s “most-wanted centre-forward”, said Chris Wright on ESPN. The stats also show that “neither Guardiola nor the Premier League have had a player quite like City’s new striker”, said Adam Bate on Sky Sports. “And that is a problem for everyone else.”

City boss Guardiola has “already fallen in love with him”, said Luke Edwards in The Telegraph. However, it’s the reaction “across the other 19 dugouts” where managers have been “calling each other to sound out ways to stop him”. After City fell two down against Palace on Saturday, Haaland delivered “a monstrous performance” which was both “brutal and beautiful”. The “lethal” centre-forward is “spooking Premier League opponents” and one rival boss has described him as “like an alien... stronger, taller, faster than anything we have seen before”.

The final piece in the City jigsaw?

Since taking over as manager in 2016, Guardiola has led City to four Premier League titles, an FA Cup and four league cups. Despite spending more than €1bn on players, the Spaniard has yet to add the Champions League trophy – the Holy Grail – to the club’s silverware collection.

Having reached three quarter-finals, the semi-finals and one final in the past five seasons, could Haaland be the “final piece in the jigsaw” for City in their Champions League quest, asked Steve Sutcliffe on the BBC.

Former Newcastle and England striker Alan Shearer believes that Haaland should be looking to score “30, 35, 40” goals a season because of the amount of chances that City create. “For so long, City had been playing without that focal striker,” Shearer told BBC Sport. “There is no doubt he is seen as the final piece in the jigsaw to take them over the line in the Champions League.”

In this season’s Champions League, City have been drawn in group G with Spanish side Sevilla and Danish club FC Copenhagen. They will also face Dortmund, said Sky Sports, with Haaland set to get “a speedy reunion” with his former club.