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on 23rd August when Tottenham Hotspur Visited Etihad Stadium, erling holland Did not score. It was remarkable then. Now it is even more. This is the only game this season in which he has played for club or country in which he has not found the net, making it the only game since May in which he has started but not scored.
Haaland’s goals may seem like one of football’s great certainties. Manchester City And Norway can enjoy the predictability of it all. Opponents may have to resign themselves to the inevitability of all this. The chants of his surname may sound like a particularly ominous Viking war cry. It’s a warning, a prediction: Haaland will be on the scoresheet as well.
so when david moyes Reached out after the final whistle, it was with a light-hearted message. “I wish he was somewhere else,” she said everton Manager. “Most managers will be thinking the same thing.”
As Moyes underlined, Everton were defeated by Haaland yet were far from being humiliated in the process. “I mainly thought we did a really good job on him, but you think, ‘How can you say that when he’s only got two goals for himself?'” he said.
But this is the difficulty of facing it. Everton denied Haaland any attempts on goal in the first 57 minutes. Six minutes later he was on a hat-trick. He almost achieved it in injury time, having twice been denied by the excellence of Jordan Pickford. “I give the goalkeeper a lot of credit for the way he defended Haaland one-on-one,” Moyes said. This saved Everton from further damage; As Scott said, goal difference may not matter now, but for each club, it could matter later.
Haaland’s own goal difference is notable, but their manager jokes that it should still be better. “I’m disappointed he didn’t score four or five goals,” Guardiola said, smiling. Haaland already has five goals for Norway against Moldova this season, but instead had to settle for two fifths and a third in four City matches of the campaign. He often gets a double, if he only gets a single it might be more newsworthy.
Since Tottenham released him, Haaland has scored in 11 consecutive matches for club and country, a run that has seen him net 21 goals; Which, to put it another way, is more than his celebrant father, Alf Inge, scored in his entire career. A more relevant stat now is that Haaland – the youth version, anyway – has now scored City’s last seven goals. As of now, he doesn’t need anyone else anyway.
“He has something that others don’t have because of his ability to score,” Moyes said. Haaland’s height adds another dimension. City faced the familiar challenge of finding a way through a packed defence, and overcame it with success. “Sergio [Aguero] “Scored a lot of goals with his head, but Erling has a huge presence,” Guardiola said.
And Haaland buried a towering header from Nico O’Reilly’s cross. Unsurprisingly, Everton left him unmarked, with their backtracking centre-backs finishing on the goalline instead. But given the heights to which Haaland reached, he might have seemed invincible anyway.
He also sent his second chance. Savinho helped him up and Haaland fired a shot past Pickford. A goalkeeper who had not conceded a goal in an England shirt in over a year was beaten twice in five minutes for Everton. Indeed, when Pickford almost conceded early on, it was in an attempt to stop Haaland: Jake O’Brien, marking him when Phil Foden took a corner, hit a header against his own bar.
City got Haaland more involved as the game progressed. “We found him much more than in the first half,” Guardiola said. “When you have players like that you have to utilize them.” Phil Foden played a key role in this, providing sharp passes in preparation for each goal. Moyes felt that Foden had taken over as the best player on the pitch from Iliman Ndiaye, who threatened Everton on the break. They did not come just to defend, to threaten to retaliate.
Ndiaye made a good save from a sharp, rising shot from Gianluigi Donnarumma. When Nathan Ake played the ball in and Senegal crossed, a sliding Beto almost headed it in. Beto misses the second chance, signaled offside but probably on. If it had gone in, VAR would have intervened. If Everton have an erratic striker, City have a clinical striker.
Of course, such comparisons may be unfair to Beto. Haaland’s true peers are men like Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe, who are competing for the unofficial title of best centre-forward in the world. There may be no definite answer to this, but as Guardiola said a few weeks ago, City will not trade him for anyone.