On 23 August, when Tottenham Hotspur visited the Etihad Stadium, Erling Haaland did not score. It was notable then. It is still more so now. It is the only game this season in which he played, for either club or country, when he has not found the net, the only one since May that he has started but not scored in.
Haaland’s goals can seem one of the great footballing certainties. Manchester City and Norway can revel in the predictability of it all. Opponents may end up resigned to the inevitability of it all. The chants of his surname can sound like a particularly ominous Viking war cry. It is a warning, a prophecy: Haaland will be on the scoresheet as well as their lips.
So when David Moyes headed towards him after the final whistle, it was with a light-hearted message. “I wish he was somewhere else,” said the Everton manager. “Most managers would be thinking the same.”
As Moyes underlined, Everton were beaten by Haaland yet far from disgraced in the process. “I thought in the main we did a really good job on him but you think, ‘how can you say that when he has just got himself two goals?’” he said.
But that is the difficulty of facing him. Everton denied Haaland an effort on goal of any description in the first 57 minutes. Six minutes later, he was on a hat-trick. He almost got it in injury time, twice being denied by the excellence of Jordan Pickford. “I give great credit to the goalkeeper for the way he defended Haaland one v one,” added Moyes. It spared Everton further damage; as the Scot said, goal difference does not matter now but, for each club, it may do later.
Haaland’s own goal difference is remarkable, but his manager joked it should be still better. “I’m disappointed he did not score four or five goals,” smiled Guardiola. Haaland already has one five-goal haul this season, for Norway against Moldova, but instead had to settle for a fifth brace of the campaign and a third in four City matches. He gets a double so often it may be more newsworthy if he only got one.
Since Tottenham kept him out, Haaland has struck in 11 consecutive games for club and country, a run that has brought him 21 goals; which, to put it another way, is more than his celebrating father, Alf Inge, scored in his entire career. A more relevant statistic now is that Haaland – the younger version, anyway – has now scored City’s last seven goals. For now, anyway, they don’t need anyone else.
“His ability to score, he has got something others haven’t,” Moyes said. Haaland’s height has added another dimension. City faced the familiar challenge of finding a way through a packed defence and made the breakthrough by going over it. “Sergio [Aguero] scored a lot of goals with his head but the presence of Erling, he is huge,” said Guardiola. City used to score a lot with low cutbacks. Now there is a logic to high crosses.
And Haaland buried a towering header from Nico O’Reilly’s cross. Uncharacteristically, Everton had left him unmarked, their backtracking centre-backs instead ending up on the goalline. But given the height Haaland reached, he may have looked unstoppable anyway.
He dispatched his second chance, too. Savinho teed him up and Haaland arrowed a shot under Pickford. A goalkeeper who has not conceded in an England shirt in a year was beaten twice in five minutes for Everton. Indeed, when Pickford almost conceded earlier, it was in an attempt to halt Haaland: Jake O’Brien, marking him when Phil Foden took a corner, thudded a header against his own bar.
As the game went on, City got Haaland more involved. “We found him much more than in the first half,” added Guardiola. “When you have these kind of players, you have to use him.” Phil Foden was instrumental in that, playing incisive passes in the build-up to each goal. Moyes felt Foden took over as the best player on the pitch from Iliman Ndiaye, who gave Everton a threat on the break. They did not come just to defend, offering a counterattacking threat.
Ndiaye drew a fine save from Gianluigi Donnarumma with a rasping, rising shot. When Nathan Ake gave the ball away and the Senegalese crossed, a sliding Beto almost turned it in. Beto missed a second chance, flagged offside but perhaps on. Had it gone in, VAR may have intervened. If Everton have an erratic striker, City have a clinical one.
Such comparisons may be unfair to Beto, of course. Haaland’s true peers are men such as Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe, each contesting the unofficial title of the best centre-forward in the world. There may be no definitive answer but, as Guardiola said a few weeks ago, City would not swap him for anyone.
