In fairness to Pep Guardiola, he did later apologise for and regret his infamous description of Tottenham as ‘the Harry Kane Team’.
Which is just as well, really, because now more than ever before if his latest iteration of Manchester City is to achieve anything this season it will do so as the Erling Haaland Team. He is now the pointy end of this team to a far greater degree than ever before, which is itself quite mad when one considers the goalscoring feats of his first few seasons in Manchester.
This season, though, in a new-look, post-De Bruyne City, Guardiola is leaning on and playing to the strengths of his most potent weapon with gleeful relish.
When he scored his second goal in the first half of a fine 3-1 victory over an excellent Bournemouth team, both strikes the sort of quick-breaking one-on-ones where you just never expect him to miss, it took his overall contribution to 13 of City’s 19 Premier League goals this season.
Alas, Nico O’Reilly’s smartly taken goal after half-time that provided necessary comfort to the scoreline took Haaland back below the two-thirds mark. But at least it was O’Reilly’s first Premier League goal of the season, meaning City’s second leading scorer – now 11 behind Haaland – remains Maxime Esteve own goals.
Against all-comers, Haaland’s advantage this season is now seven goals. Nobody else in the entire division has even half his tally, with 13 goals beyond the overall total managed so far by half the teams in the league.
There are valid concerns over the extent of City’s reliance now on Haaland’s flair for the absurd. The two Premier League games in which he has failed to score have seen City finish without a point or goal to show for it, against Spurs early in the season and Villa last week.
But when he is in this kind of mood it would seem like an act of wilful contrarianism to play any other way. Bournemouth had started brightly here, in keeping with their general start to the season which had seen them unbeaten since the opening night at Liverpool. On Sky Sports commentary, Alan Smith was just in the middle of commenting on how well the visitors had begun when a Rayan Cherki header set Haaland racing clear from his own half.
Smith never finished that sentence; he knew as did everyone else in the stadium up to and including Haaland and Djordje Petrovic the sheer inevitability of what was about to occur.
It’s impossible to overstate just how compelling that certainty felt from the moment Haaland’s first touch had the ball under his full control with absolutely no loss of top speed. From that moment on, there was nothing anybody could do to change what would happen next.
This was about as difficult as a one-on-one gets. A bouncing ball, a long run to goal where a lesser striker may get lost among their own thoughts and defenders desperately trying to get back and involved. We can’t think of many strikers we would confidently currently back to score in that kind of situation. Yet the very idea of Haaland doing anything but felt simply preposterous.
And it was the same with knobs on for an even tougher second chance 15 minutes and one unexpected Bournemouth equaliser later.
For City it was a victory against high-quality opposition that reasserts their credentials as Arsenal’s most likely, and perhaps only, source of significant concern this season.
This has been a Premier League season beset by chaos yet now, 99 games in, there is order at the summit where Arsenal, City and Liverpool now occupy the top three positions and in a clear order of merit.
Bournemouth remain interlopers in a top six rounded out by Spurs and Chelsea, but defeat here does nothing to suggest they can’t continue to defy gravity under the astute eye of Andoni Iraola.
Part of what makes this such an impressive win for City was just how hard it was to imagine anyone else – perhaps even Arsenal – ultimately winning so comfortably against a performance of such wit and tenacity from the visitors. Haaland was not just the difference on the scoreboard but in every way; Bournemouth matched City in every aspect apart from the presence of an absurd and near unstoppable goalscoring automaton.
Certainly this was a performance that would likely have been enough to get Bournemouth a result against anyone outside the top three, with mounting evidence that Bournemouth absolutely will get results against anyone outside the top three on a fairly consistent basis.
They have worked miracles to be this good after the quality of player sales they had to endure in the summer. But not even Iraola’s alchemy can spirit a Haaland from base metal. He remains the Premier League’s most precious commodity.
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