In Focus: Erli days but Haaland’s already shining for City

Erling Haaland has quickly shown the Premier League what he is about at Manchester City.

Two goals on his debut at West Ham, one in the thrilling draw with Newcastle and a hat-trick in the comeback win over Crystal Palace.

Haaland, 22, is already feared by top-flight defences and is making City an even more formidable side.

As he looks to find the back of the net again against Nottingham Forest tonight, we look at the forward’s time in England so far.

First hat-trick

It never felt like we would have to wait long to see Haaland net a treble in England.

And with City 2-1 down to Palace after a 3-3 draw at St James’ Park a week earlier, it was exactly the sort of moment the Norwegian was bought in for.

Haaland said: “It’s a proud moment for me and my family.

“But my dad will probably say he had more goals in the Premier League than me so I will chase that.

“It was a really good feeling to turn the game around. We had the mentality to trust each other and keep going.

“It’s about trying to continue what we are doing. It was about small adjustments and we did that and got results.”

Leopard won’t change his spots

The narrative when City signed Haaland was that he would need to adjust his game to fit into a Pep Guardiola side.

Strikers are expected to join in with the link-up play, harry defenders and genuinely be fluid in his formations.

Not Haaland. City made 770 passes against Palace, he was responsible for just seven of them. They touched the ball 916 times, only 16 of them were from the Norwegian.

To put that into context, fellow new-boy Julian Alvarez came off the bench in the 61st minute and had 27 touches, trying three times as many passes.

Haaland won one header and only took the ball back for City once, yet none of that really matters.

He had three big chances and he scored them all. City left with three points, Haaland left with the match ball.

Ignore the noise

Despite winning the title last term, up front was always an area that City were likely to strengthen.

And Guardiola was full of praise for Haaland on the back of the Palace display — his comments clearly suggesting goals are the only metric he will be judging the ex-Borussia Dortmund striker by.

Guardiola said: “Always he has done this in his life, at Salzburg, BVB [Borussia Dortmund], always scored goals.

“These teams who defend deep — he has an incredible sense of goal. The three goals, especially the last one, the first one as well, good goals.

“He came for that [scoring important goals], what he has done all his life, the numbers of this guy is beyond [comprehension].”

How to stop him?

Reports in one national paper this weekend suggested top-flight managers have been discussing how to stop Haaland over the phone.

But it is proving nigh on impossible at the moment. Forest boss Steve Cooper admitted that City have so many threats, you struggle to stop them all.

On Haaland, he said: “The obvious quality is his goal-scoring ability and his ruthlessness in wanting to do that.

“For all of the good things he’s got in his game, that’s the real obvious one that makes all the difference. That’s what we’ve been analysing as much as anything else.

“He has definitely added to that attacking strength, that’s for sure. We just have to be as mindful as we can of it but back us to be the best we can be as well.

“We don’t want to tie ourselves up in knots, we have to manage him as well as we can.”

Get better

There is a chance Cooper’s Forest will not even have to deal with Haaland tonight.

Guardiola was busy talking up fellow striker Julian Alvarez ahead of the game — the Norwegian will not be exempt from the rotation policy that so frustrated Raheem Sterling.

But the Spaniard also sent a message to Premier League.

He said: “We didn’t have doubts but he has been here just one month, there are many games still to come and time to be a better player and we are working on that.”

If people thought that with six goals in four games Haaland was already at his peak, think again.