Hurricane Haaland roars again
Lethal Erling scores three as City blow Forest away
Five matches into the season and erling Haaland’s well over a third of the way to winning the Golden Boot. No, honestly. Go and check the calendar. And then check the recent winners.
Twenty-three has been the magic number in each of the last three campaigns. Twenty-two in the one before that. Haaland has nine already. Carry on at this rate and he will obliterate all records.
One went early doors last night. No player has ever scored this many times in their first five Premier League appearances — Haaland beating the eight set by Micky Quinn and Sergio Aguero when he completed his hat-trick seven minutes before half-time.
At that point, it was six goals in his last two halves of football — having left this stadium to a standing ovation after a second-half treble against Crystal Palace on Saturday.
it took Aguero a few years to get himself a couple of match balls here. How many more could possibly follow for his successor? Plenty, you would imagine.
Nottingham Forest were beaten long before all that. it took Haaland three touches to finish this as a contest — his first to score the opener and the next two were both involved in engineering
the second. Three touches and that was that, midway through the first half. Thanks for coming.
And by the break, he had outscored 15 teams in the division.
These are days that the City supporters, who Pep Guardiola has heavily praised for cranking up the volume over the past few weeks, must cherish.
They usually have to patiently wait for their new signings to learn Guardiola’s way and to be moulded into superstars over a period of time.
This guy just turned up as someone who believes that they are the best in the world.
Despite later scoring his first two
league goals for the club, poor Julian Alvarez — who had been bright and tenacious in the No 10 role — became something of a footnote thanks to Haaland.
For now it is all about the Norwegian and quite what the rest of the top flight does with him is anybody’s guess.
Haaland showed last night that he is too fast, too tall, too strong and his feet too quick for defenders. And better defenders than those who lined up for Forest last night will find that out over the coming months.
As signings go, this is transformative for Guardiola and — amazingly, just a month into his
City career and a month since some toyed with writing him off following the Community Shield — it is appearing difficult for the manager to find new ways of describing how good his No 9 is.
‘i’m surprised at how quickly both strikers have adapted,’ Guardiola said. ‘They have settled in a way i could not expect. After the Community Shield, people say erling will not adapt. i have the feeling they are like, “OK, i want to prove myself to the world”. it gives all of us extra energy.’
What Haaland does is take any jeopardy out of these home matches against smart opposition. Forest were not overwhelmingly
bad, but manager Steve Cooper was left bemoaning the minor mistakes that they made. ‘We had to be 100 per cent, perfect in the game. But we weren’t,’ he said.
Anyway, the goals. in the 12th minute, Phil Foden sat deep from a corner. He looked up and saw that Haaland had made two different runs.
Their telepathy is such that the timing was perfect and, although Foden’s cross deflected slightly off Morgan Gibbs-White, he was always going to find his man. Joe Worrall could do nothing about Haaland’s dart and the 22-yearold stabbed past Forest keeper Dean Henderson. Henderson will
not be fond of the highlights for goal two, his lax pass in the 23rd minute only finding Bernardo Silva and seconds later it was in the Manchester United loanee’s net.
Haaland laid the ball into Foden’s path and Neco Williams’ last-ditch tackle could only divert the ball back towards the Norwegian who slotted the ball into an empty net.
Then Haaland had his third and again Foden’s involvement was key.
The England midfielder found John Stones and the defender nodded it to Haaland — who was hanging in the six-yard box,
nestled between men who might as well have been in different postcodes — and he finished the job with his head.
City scored their fourth on the 50- minute mark when Joao Cancelo found the top corner.
Alvarez then scored his double, first slamming underneath Henderson with 25 minutes left and then hammering it into the roof of the net in the 87th minute in a way that Aguero would have been proud of. ‘Oh my God,’ Guardiola said. ‘So precise. So good.’
Haaland had departed to a high five and slap on the backside from his manager and sat among the substitutes grinning with
Foden, who pinched his ear as they laughed.
Watching this, nobody else who fancies winning anything this year will be smiling.