As far as introductions go, Erling Haaland gave us a pretty good preview of what’s in store for the next few months.
The two goals, of course. Really explosive pace, intelligent movement, the incredible skill – which he himself emphasizes – to never be ambushed and the finishing of the ice in the veins.
We all knew he had it in him, it was just a question of how long it would take him to show it in a Manchester City shirt.
Would his players find him, would his direct style resonate with his more patient colleagues? Whether that will be the case more often is impossible to say now, but it’s been a pretty ominous start for the rest of the league and Europe’s best.
Perhaps the more interesting thing is not whether he can do the things everyone knows he can do, but how he would correct the little things he’s not so good at?
“A week ago he couldn’t adapt to the Premier League and now he’s with Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer and Cristiano Ronaldo,” Pep Guardiola dryly reflected afterwards, before making a better point.
“He came for five years, hopefully he can stay longer and what we want is for him to be happy. He is a man with incredible talent to score goals, but we would like to add something more to his game, to be a better player. Not just a goalscorer, which is incredibly important, but that’s why we want to try to give him everything to make him a better player.”
One example is his link game. Sources around City have stressed that Guardiola will not change his plans too much to fit Haaland and that the Norwegian will simply have to adjust by dropping deep to tie the game, as a string of false nines have done in the last 18 the month.
And overall, every one of his touches apart from his two goals came when he dropped West Ham defenders deep and found a team-mate.
Athletic’s Ahmed Walid will take up the baton of using City’s Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo as central midfielders, explaining how the ploy led to City’s two goals, so let’s focus on the big Norwegian battering ram who will grab the headlines on Monday morning.
And that linking game, often considered the weakest element of his impressive game, was…actually brilliant.
As well as his attack on the spaces behind the West Ham defence. A perfect example came just after the hour mark.
He initially dropped deep to receive a pass from Rhodri, flicked it to Walker and then started to run as City put together perhaps their most cunning play of the afternoon.
They had been looking to switch play to the wing (Jack Grealish on the left, Phil Foden on the right) all afternoon and on this occasion, when Foden got the ball, he set Kevin De Bruyne into the right half-space.
Foden found it and De Bruyne produced one of those low crosses to his back post, but it just eluded Haaland. Ilkay Gundogan almost won, but his shot was timid.
What it showed was the perfect combination of what Haaland will need to do: drop down to connect play in the center circle, but be alert, mobile and quick enough to go and finish the move.
He may not have scored, but he is sending a warning to other teams that Haaland understands what is being asked of him.
He did it again soon after, dropping to receive a pass from Nathan Ake, easing the pressure on his team and finding Rhodri before turning and charging forward.
This time it didn’t lead to a chance, but it showed what he had to do.
There were plenty of other passes that were nothing more than routine, but serve as proof that Haaland is hardly some fool who can barely control the ball.
He did make just 23 passes (see below), the fewest of any City starter, but almost every one was a test of how quickly he could tap into this dizzying passing machine. So a submission accuracy of 91 percent is quite promising.
Of course, it’s not that part of his game that will live up to the well-deserved hype surrounding his arrival. If he hadn’t scored on Sunday, the praise for his five-yard passes with a defender on his back might have sounded a little hollow, but considering that’s one of the things he was expected to improve, it was a good sign. Fans once praised his father with a rendition of “There’s Only One Alfie Haaland” while he was doing it.
And of course, there were instances where he was downright dangerous with his interactions. In the first half, De Bruyne’s shot was ruled out for offside after Gundogan drifted beyond the last defender, but it was Haaland’s turn and his pass from behind that got it there.
Gundogan soon repaid the favor – perhaps underscoring why he was given the edge over Bernardo Silva – by picking the ball up in his favored left-half space, turning and releasing the Norwegian forward. Haaland darted from behind and rounded goalkeeper Alphonse Areola with the ball, who brought him down. Haaland immediately grabbed the ball and his cool shot hit the inside of the post.
If some elements of his Premier League debut were pleasantly surprising, one was almost entirely predictable.
De Bruyne was a little rusty, his radar a little off, but when the opportunity presented itself to put a ball into space for Haaland, he did exactly what he had to do. As did Haaland, who took his chance and finished with certainty.
VAR has ruined a few such moments over the years, but not this time.
“I’ve been thinking about it my whole life, running back to get it perfect,” Haaland said during the preseason. “Me and my dad have discussed it a lot and when VAR came it was just fine for me because actually the truth is I’m almost never offside.”
And so it proved this time as there was never any question that the goal could be ruled out.
And so he was left to reflect on his debut. “I could have (had a hat-trick) with Ilkay’s just before I went off, so it was a bit of a bummer,” he said on Sky Sports.
Indeed, he was furious with himself when Gundogan flicked a low ball across the box from the left.
When Guardiola was pressed on how he wanted his new striker to improve, he went back to Haaland’s own comments: “What he already said. Finishing the movements left and right, with your head.”
The City boss also stressed that the team will still need to be patient, keep working the ball left and right, but that they have a “new weapon”, as he called it, when it comes to opening teams up. “We felt like we could find it more … now we have it, and when the defense is tall with open space, those guys have to find it. When you have that open space and Kevin, it’s hard to stop him.”
Clearly there is more.
(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
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