It’s been widely reported that Manchester City are ready to trigger the €75million release clause to sign Erling Haaland this summer from Dortmund.
The deal - which equates to around £62m - would represent good value for the champions, although it’s expected they’d have to pay the forward approximately £500,000 per week in wages.
Haaland has scored a standout 82 goals in 85 games since joining Dortmund in January 2020 and he is widely regarded as one of, if not the best young strikers in Europe. In the eyes of many, bringing in an elite striker is seen as the final piece of the jigsaw for Guardiola’s men who’ve largely been without a recognised striker since Sergio Aguero’s departure last summer.
But while the Norwegian forward is undoubtedly a huge talent, his arrival wouldn’t be an immediate guaranteed success, as Chelsea have discovered this season.
Last summer, Chelsea found themselves in a similar position to City without a standout striker to lead their attack. They therefore made a move to re-sign Romelu Lukaku for a club-record fee. Although older and in his prime years, he like Haaland was regarded as an almost-perfect centre-forward who’d netted a scintillating 64 goals in 95 appearances for Inter Milan.
There was an expectancy that’d he carry his lethal form into his Chelsea career seamlessly, however, the reality has played out far different. He’s still managed to net 12 times across all competitions, although only seven of those goals have come in either the Premier League or Champions League.
Although he’s been hampered by injuries and COVID related absences, he’s still accumulated over 1700 minutes in both of those competitions for Chelsea this season. Meaning his goal average breaks down to a pretty unremarkable 0.37 per 90.
For comparison, last season his goal average for both Champions League and Serie A matches was 0.71 per 90.
There’s a mixture of reasons as to why it hasn’t worked out for the Belgian international, but one of the big ones is linked to how Chelsea play. They have a number of gifted attackers with excellent technical ability, meaning false nine formations have often played to their strengths.
The likes of Kai Havertz and Mason Mount thrive by taking up different positions in the final third, receiving the ball on the half-turn, creating chances and making late runs into the penalty area to latch onto cut-backs.
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Such moves don’t always give Lukaku, playing as a focal point, the best platform to thrive, as touched on by Tuchel back in February when quizzed on the striker’s struggles, “We want to bring Romelu in better situations, more situations, we want to understand him better, his teammates do”.
At the time, Tuchel also pointed to City’s strength in not being too reliant on just one player to score their goals, “There are teams who heavily rely on one goalscorer out there, it is no secret. There are also teams like Manchester City who don’t rely on one person”.
Although not carbon copies of each other stylistically, City like Chelsea utilise standout technical attackers who rotate effortlessly between different roles in their attack, making them a lethal and balanced unit who rarely look like they require a traditional striker to spearhead the attack.
While Haaland has proven to be an exceptional talent, there’s a chance his arrival could well disrupt the equilibrium of City’s attack in the same way Lukaku’s has at Chelsea. At the very least, it’s likely that a period of adaptation might be required to allow not only the 21-year-old time to find his best form at the Etihad but also to allow his teammates to adjust to again playing with a recognised centre-forward.
