Are we the farmers’ league? It’s a fair question to ask, certainly if any concerns over whether Erling Haaland would adapt to life in the Premier League were considered fair just a few weeks ago. Some questioned whether he would suit Manchester City’s style of play. Some wondered if he would have to pay “the Bundesliga tax”. Some, more reasonably, asked if he might be rested for this first midweek outing of many, given his less than ideal injury record.
But after scoring his second hat-trick in the space of a week, taking just 38 minutes to tear newly-promoted Nottingham Forest apart, it is the poor defenders that have to face him every week between now and May who are probably in need of a good lie down.
To put what is happening in context: the most goals scored by a player in a single Premier League season is 34, a tally managed by both Andrew Cole for Newcastle United in 1993-94 and Alan Shearer for Blackburn Rovers the following year. But back then, a top-flight season was 42 games long. Mohamed Salah’s 2017-18 is the best on a scoring rate basis, his 32 goals working out at 0.84 per game. Haaland is currently scoring 1.8 goals per game, more than double that record-breaking rate. He is on course to score 68.
It is only a small sample, of course, and it has been a remarkably fast start. Sooner or later, he should slow down. But if there was ever a player to give you reason to doubt that, to look capable of keeping this up, to take the principle of regression to the mean and beat it in a foot race, it is this player in this team. He is an outlier, an anomaly, an alien, a freak, and all those other insults that are meant as terms of endearment when applied to him. And worryingly for just about everyone except City, he is only just getting started.
In an opening quarter-of-an-hour at the Etihad when every Forest player’s first touch was a clearance, Haaland’s was a goal. His lack of involvement in City’s long spells of possession was briefly a talking point after the only Premier League game in which he has drawn a blank so far, the 3-0 win over Bournemouth here earlier this month. Funnily enough, it hasn’t been mentioned much since. After all, does it really matter how many touches he has when he seems to make every one of them count?
It’s not as if they are easy finishes. Not this one, at least. Phil Foden’s cross from the inside-left channel was slightly deflected off Morgan Gibbs-White. The angle between Haaland, his marker Joe Worrall and the inside of the near post was tight. Yet with Worrall’s 6ft3in frame held comfortably at an arm’s length, there was plenty enough room to loft the ball through the gap between the upright and goalkeeper Dean Henderson with an expertly-taken finish.
His second was much simpler but still a display of his pure striking instincts. Perhaps the scariest thing about Haaland’s start is that it is not all speed, strength and the raw power he possesses when running in behind. He is perfectly good at standing still but in the right place, anticipating where the ball might drop. So it was when he slipped Foden through on goal, only to see his teammate take a heavy touch and become sandwiched between Henderson and Neco Williams. No matter, he was on hand to stroke into an empty net.
That strength and power cannot be underplayed, though. It was responsible for the third, the type of goal that City would seldom have scored without a presence like Haaland last season. Joao Cancelo sent a cross to the far right-hand post with the outside of the post. Foden headed back across goal, Stones returned the favour. Haaland was in the dead centre of the six-yard box, ready to clamber up almost as high as the crossbar and nod in at point-blank range. It was his ninth goal in five games, his sixth in 60 minutes and, you suspected, his final meaningful act of the evening before a half-time substitution.
But instead, he stayed on. Guardiola will manage his minutes over the coming weeks once the Champions League kicks in - he has already admitted as much – but perhaps even he could not substitute a striker playing this irresistibly. In any case, it was time for the supporting act to take over. Cancelo added City’s fourth, striking from outside the box when offered time and space by a Forest defence that was already playing for pride. The fifth and sixth were the first Premier League goals in the career of Julian Alvarez, whose name would be much higher up this report on any other night.
His finishes were brilliantly taken – the first struck across a helpless Henderson at a tight angle, the second swept into the top left-hand corner late on. Alvarez is Haaland’s understudy for now, though, and you feel it is a role he is going to have to get used to. Haaland was eventually substituted right after Alvarez’s first. He was replaced by no less than Kevin De Bruyne, for so long considered the best player in the best team in the league. After the way Haaland has started, even that truism may be coming under threat.
