[
](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7hyG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffb91e388-d680-4e37-a441-275d1f0f22b2_465x372.avif)
It’s a long time since Jamie Carragher suggested Erling Haaland might have joined the wrong club in Manchester City but… a hundred goals and half-a-dozen medals later, I still know what he meant. Kind of.
Haaland was a happy man yesterday… a guy who’s actually employed to add up the number of times he touched the ball counted to ‘31’ before Erling was handed his latest player-of-the-match award at the end of the Manchester derby. That’s nearly as many connections with that round thing he earns his living chasing after as in any other Premier League game in the last year.
Haaland does a lot of chasing. Without the ball, without complaint.
Carragher is employed to analyse and critique the elite ball chasers that we watch in our millions every Super Duper Sunday on Sky. The comment that Haaland was not ‘the perfect fit’ for City was made 31 goals in 29 games into his Etihad career back in February 2023. Carra knew he was asking for it but…
… it’s on days like yesterday when Pep Guardiola’s talismanic goal-getter is involved in everything City do that I understand what Jamie was getting at. As compliments go, it’s a veiled one but I think it was an observation in rich praise of Haaland.
Never once has Haaland looked anything less than happy with life at City. A 9-and-a-half year contract valued at around £200 million could just help placate any frustrations he may still be harbouring at getting only 31 of City’s 600-and-odd touches against United, but the lolly didn’t appear to be on his mind when he put his body on the line to make a hat-trick of critical defensive clearances at the start of the second-half. He’s as much of a giver as a taker.
The chances he took yesterday were a pair of aces we have seen him show at high roller tables around Europe dozens of times before… first, the studied dink past a goalkeeper caught in his headlights… then the cold-eyed slot to win a one-on-one encounter. Both were winning hands dealt to him by balls played in behind defences for Haaland to run onto… the very kind of pass that Carragher felt Pep’s City delivered more sparingly than most other teams. That was his only reservation about the match up.
In the two seasons between Sergio Aguero’s age catching up with him and Haaland’s arrival, City won the title with Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez as their leading goal scorers. A bevvy of beautifully creative talents like Bernardo Silva, Gabriel Jesus, Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling and even Kevin De Bruyne took it in turns to appear in various disguises as some version of a central forward.
As confused tv researchers tried to invent 2D captions to illustrate City’s next fluid 4D formation, the players continued to come up with combinations to open any defensive doors and share the goals around. Opponents defended so deep, they couldn’t get the ball in behind them. The last thing they needed was a big centre-forward with a less-than-velvet touch.
20 goals in his first 13 appearances for the club certainly eased the transition. Analysis seemed a little redundant when Haaland was contributing 52 goals to a treble campaign but it was in the middle of that same historic debut season that he failed to get a single touch of the ball in the Tottenham box during a defeat and Carragher suggested we were ‘only seeing 60% of what Haaland can do’ and even wondered ‘if he had picked the wrong club?’
It was City’s last meaningful loss of that season. You can argue that Haaland’s mega numbers settle all arguments… 129 goals in 142 starts for City… but his going rate at Borussia Dortmund was every bit as impressive and Guardiola’s team scored as freely before he arrived in 2022 as they have done since. It is not like he has revolutionised the club’s fortunes or vice-versa.
It’s actually Haaland’s goals-per-touches statistics that single him out as an exception to most of the rules… but – weirdly - at the same time pose the bigger question as to whether either the player or the team have actively tried to adapt to each other. That is the most fascinating debate.
Surely even Guardiola’s magic mind didn’t envisage that Haaland would lead the City attack so successfully and yet often have less than 20 touches of the ball in a game. That can’t have been the plan. It is just the most wonderful tactical contradiction.
City spent more than £50 million on a spearhead striker that apparently thrives on long passes played over and beyond defences and on early cross balls into the penalty area… only to follow a football blueprint that weaves mesmeric short-passing patterns and is patiently prepared to wait for the perfect crossing opportunities. And it works.
It’s not a rigid Amorim ‘Plan A only’ blueprint. Pep is nothing if not a tinkerer and there was a spell in the midst of last season’s trials and tribulations when City seemed to be making a conscious effort to pass earlier and longer to maximise the benefits of Omar Marmoush’s injection of pace. But the wide players deployed most recently to maintain Haaland’s supply line – Grealish, Doku, Savinho, Bobb etc – are not as likely to deliver an early cross as Mahrez or Sterling were.
If the ratio of runs per cross is not that high, it’s also not one the hitman appears to be computing.
It’s not a problem for Erling Haaland. Nothing ever is… nothing seems to sap or dilute his enthusiasm or commitment. If the ball doesn’t come to him during the build-up, he will just keep showing until it does… if the crosses are delayed for another pass or ten, he’ll still find space for the eventual arrival of the next one. He’s ever ready.
And when City do have one of those afternoons when Haaland is everywhere… when he’s scoring goals, creating chances, making clearances and getting touches… the joy in his undoubted ability to be a true match-winner is infectious and uplifting. He is larger than life. Kolo Toure tried to wrap his arms around Haaland when he was substituted but they weren’t long enough. He is almost bigger than the team and all the method and ethics that Pep feverishly drills into them. An outlier.
Haaland returned to Manchester fresh from a 5-goal international haul for Norway that has put his national team firmly on course for their first major finals in 26 years. The best players on the planet should be at the World Cup and 11 goals in 6 games for club and country so far this season suggest he is as good as anyone at what he does.
Jamie Carragher is an admirer of both Haaland and City. It’s his job to provoke thought and debate but if the player is doing what he’s doing on 20 touches per game, maybe we have indeed seen only 60% of his potential yet. Haaland is 25. The world is still at his feet. City have just got to get the ball to them a little more often.