Rio Ferdinand has admitted he is big enough to accept he was wrong about what Erling Haaland would be capable of in the Premier League.
Manchester City striker Haaland sits atop the Premier League scoring charts with 15 league goals this season, and has five for his new club in all competitions. The former Borussia Dortmund star was on target against Southampton on Saturday, and has found the net in eight of City's nine league matches including three hat-tricks.
Haaland has already matched the tally of City's top Premier League scorer from last season, when Kevin De Bruyne led the way. With more than three quarters of the league season remaining, though, he has been tipped to challenge the record of 34 goals in a Premier League campaign, held jointly by Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole when there were still 42 games in a season.
"No one knew what he would do," Ferdinand said on BT Sport's Premier League Tonight. "I am a big enough man to admit this guy is doing different bits now, it’s unheard of. It is stupid really.
"It is like a Sunday league player who's overage, you know you get ringers who just take the game by storm and you find out two years later he was overage, and he is doing that here in the Premier League. People always throw the question 'he's in Germany, though - he's doing that over there, he's not doing it here'
"I was only concerned about one thing and that was can he score the type of goals he did before. When you look at his showreel, a lot of his goals were running onto things, on the break, in transitions.
"At City they've got possession all the time and teams are sat back, can you find the little spaces to score the goals. That's about instinct and understanding the game, he said to everybody do not question me ever again."
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Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was asked about Haaland's record after Saturday's win, which also saw Joao Cancelo, Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez find the net. Remarkably, it brought his goals per game average down, from 1.46 goals per game to 'just' 1.43.
"I am so unhappy he didn’t score three goals! That’s why there is a petition to sack him from the Premier League – but now it won’t happen because of that," Guardiola said with a grin on his face.
"But, no, it is nice. The expectation is so high that everyone thinks that in every game he should score three or four goals. In the end he was there to score one, to help us keep the ball and to fight. Erling played really well.”
