9 | Erling Haaland - 2025/26

Blue Maverick said:
Needs to be used in a Klopp style of play now as we don’t have a KDB or David Silva type player to find him, counter attacking football or bench him. If Pep doesn’t go I think he may well, can you imagine him playing for Madrid last night quick ball over the top of a high press he’d have scored 3 or 4.
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Klopp was seen of by Pep.
 
He‘s been really poor recently. But I‘ve got a measure of sympathy for him. He‘s thrived for us alongside head-up players, e.g. Gundogan, Foden and especially De Bruyne. Now he‘s surrounded by head-down dribblers like Savinho, Doku, Semenyo and Marmoush. No great surprise that he has virtually no chemistry with any of them.
 
sh249 said:
He‘s been really poor recently. But I‘ve got a measure of sympathy for him. He‘s thrived for us alongside head-up players, e.g. Gundogan, Foden and especially De Bruyne. Now he‘s surrounded by head-down dribblers like Savinho, Doku, Semenyo and Marmoush. No great surprise that he has virtually no chemistry with any of them.
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Im sorry but its Doku who has a right to be annoyed with Haaland.
 
Mancini’s Pastilles said:
Hes probably sick shit of watching players pass about getting their stats up while hes up top just watching the game. Might aswell Sell him.
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In fairness he is the ultimate stat player himself. The modern day 'brand' footballer. I would normally say one has to be careful because the quality of the product needs constant monitoring to stay popular.
Maybe having such a long contract or other things have become a motivation killer. Who knows whats behind a very worrying trend of abject performances.
 
sh249 said:
He‘s been really poor recently. But I‘ve got a measure of sympathy for him. He‘s thrived for us alongside head-up players, e.g. Gundogan, Foden and especially De Bruyne. Now he‘s surrounded by head-down dribblers like Savinho, Doku, Semenyo and Marmoush. No great surprise that he has virtually no chemistry with any of them.
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That excuse is wearing thin now tbh, he has played without those players for other teams and produced, he played well the other week against Newcastle.
When your supposedly world class player is playing bad some need to blame others. Same thing with Pep.
 
hilts said:
In fairness he is the ultimate stat player himself. The modern day 'brand' footballer. I would normally say one has to be careful because the quality of the product needs constant monitoring to stay popular.
Maybe having such a long contract or other things have become a motivation killer. Who knows whats behind a very worrying trend of abject performances.
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I agree hes not been good. But hes the total opposite of a pep number 9. Hes absolutely wasted with our style of play. If we could arrange a transfer with us getting a more suitable 9 it would be best for all
 
The lack of service argument doesn’t wash with me. Cast your mind back to the 2-1 win over Newcastle in the league - Haaland was absolutely immense, covered every blade of grass, was one of our best defenders and still was able to cause chaos in attack, made everything a good ball through his effort and desire. Pep even went out of his way to hail him as the best player on the pitch, he loved his performance. It ended with that one game. He didn’t show that prior and he hasn’t shown it afterwards. So what does that tell us? Well we can say with absolute certainty that in the majority of matches he is not trying his best. We know that because he showed us v Newcastle what him leaving nothing in the tank during a match looks like. And it’s alien to the rest of his recent form. He is not trying, he is not motivated. Needs to be dropped.
 
Tricky_Trev said:
The lack of service argument doesn’t wash with me. Cast your mind back to the 2-1 win over Newcastle in the league - Haaland was absolutely immense, covered every blade of grass, was one of our best defenders and still was able to cause chaos in attack, made everything a good ball through his effort and desire. Pep even went out of his way to hail him as the best player on the pitch, he loved his performance. It ended with that one game. He didn’t show that prior and he hasn’t shown it afterwards. So what does that tell us? Well we can say with absolute certainty that in the majority of matches he is not trying his best. We know that because he showed us v Newcastle what him leaving nothing in the tank during a match looks like. And it’s alien to the rest of his recent form. He is not trying, he is not motivated. Needs to be dropped.
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His half hearted trots up to the keeper or defender letting them pick a pass rather than sprinting and making them rush a pass does my head in. He’s so lazy it’s unbelievable.
 
Tricky_Trev said:
The lack of service argument doesn’t wash with me. Cast your mind back to the 2-1 win over Newcastle in the league - Haaland was absolutely immense, covered every blade of grass, was one of our best defenders and still was able to cause chaos in attack, made everything a good ball through his effort and desire. Pep even went out of his way to hail him as the best player on the pitch, he loved his performance. It ended with that one game. He didn’t show that prior and he hasn’t shown it afterwards. So what does that tell us? Well we can say with absolute certainty that in the majority of matches he is not trying his best. We know that because he showed us v Newcastle what him leaving nothing in the tank during a match looks like. And it’s alien to the rest of his recent form. He is not trying, he is not motivated. Needs to be dropped.
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Spot on. Nobody was arsed that he didn’t score in that game because he worked and fought for the team. Too many games he’s completely fucking gutless and disinterested and unfortunately lots of them are big games.
 
No way he plays at West Ham , he is a passenger at the moment , cant score , missing chances lack of effort and when does he have a great beaming smile when he f*xks up , he was superb against Newcastle in the league and then he was absymal two weeks later.
Stick him on the bench and let him nurse his massive ego , Marmoush all round game is better than Haaland and he puts a shift in every game.
 
Mancini’s Pastilles said:
I agree hes not been good. But hes the total opposite of a pep number 9. Hes absolutely wasted with our style of play. If we could arrange a transfer with us getting a more suitable 9 it would be best for all
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The problem is who? Not many Kun types about. Alvarez? I like Marmoush but for me he's more of a support striker albeit one who scores a lot.

Semenyo Alvarez Marmoush a very mobile front 3 but to get the most out of them you need Cherki behind.
 
Gordyola said:
Explain his first couple of seasons then
I’ll repeat and this is just one example btw but would you bet him to score the goal he got against Dortmund no
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His first couple of season we did no play like this.. we had kdb also, we had better wingers with more end product.. he didn’t just stand around and waited. First few seasons anytime we would be in the break you thought things would happen.. now we rarely break.. and when we do for whatever reason we stop and then go backwards or to the side…

We have changed the way we play completely because we are scared to lose the ball and get countered because of the insane high line pep still does with slow CB.. you also had mahrez, a insanely good gundo, kdb, laporte, stones, Alvarez.. team was a lot better.. you can even argue the quality has gone down but we also changed the way we play. It’s boring, it’s slow, there is no purpose… genuinely feels like when we attack we have no idea what to do.. just recycle the ball and the defense sits and waits for a counter.. and it keeps happening for the past two seasons now..
 
Tricky_Trev said:
The lack of service argument doesn’t wash with me. Cast your mind back to the 2-1 win over Newcastle in the league - Haaland was absolutely immense, covered every blade of grass, was one of our best defenders and still was able to cause chaos in attack, made everything a good ball through his effort and desire. Pep even went out of his way to hail him as the best player on the pitch, he loved his performance. It ended with that one game. He didn’t show that prior and he hasn’t shown it afterwards. So what does that tell us? Well we can say with absolute certainty that in the majority of matches he is not trying his best. We know that because he showed us v Newcastle what him leaving nothing in the tank during a match looks like. And it’s alien to the rest of his recent form. He is not trying, he is not motivated. Needs to be dropped.
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When you have an elite goal scorer in your team, you set the team up around them. With players who's main focus is to put them through on goal, because they will win you games. You look at the career that Ronaldo has had. He is almost up to 1000 career goals. Every team he has played in, for the last 20 years has been primarily set up to give him the ball in the final 3rd. And it has worked for him, and his respective clubs.

The problem Haaland has at City, is that all of the forwards want to score goals. And their main focus is not to create chances for him. People talk about this low block. Haaland is elite in the air. He is 6ft5 and can out jump any defender. Who is crossing the balls in for him? You could argue that the best crosser of a ball at City is currently on Everton's treatment table. It's madness, because you could see Haaland playing at any other club and being elite almost immediately. I was watching Newcastle the other night, and Trippier & Lewis Hall were fizzing balls into box at every opportunity and I was thinking that someone like Haaland would be having a field day with all that service.

People talk about De Bruyne being some sort of a football genius. His game was actually very simple. He would find space, receive the ball, look up and play it quickly to the striker or forward. It seems that these sorts of players are massively in decline. And there is an element of selfishness now, where players would rather score than create.

If city prefer to have a forward line where everybody scores, and all of them can play as a number 10, then it is probably best to sell Haaland, because he is being wasted up there on his own.
 
skillman said:
State of his movement here. Doesn’t leave a 5 yard radius the whole time and is hidden behind players - no attempt to attack the space. Whatsoever.

In what world does he think Doku’s cross is coming to him there? Even if Doku aims for him, it’s got no chance of getting through the bodies. If you’re going to be lazy outside the box when we need you, at least make some fucking sharp movements inside the box. Compared to Marmoush who ran his socks off on Saturday and was like a fly round shit with his movement.

He loves to go to the back post but only when he labours across to it and can hide behind whoever is marking him. If he has to race to it to bust a gut and slide in, he won’t do it.

Compare this to his very first goal with us against Bayern in USA - the hunger isn’t there right now and that’s not good enough.

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My god, instead of attacking the space between Rudiger (who's tracking Bernardo) and Huijsen, he just stays hidden back. And some people will still say it's not his fault, that he has no responsibility and that it's his teammates who aren't creating chances for him.
 
kanovic said:
His first couple of season we did no play like this.. we had kdb also, we had better wingers with more end product.. he didn’t just stand around and waited. First few seasons anytime we would be in the break you thought things would happen.. now we rarely break.. and when we do for whatever reason we stop and then go backwards or to the side…

We have changed the way we play completely because we are scared to lose the ball and get countered because of the insane high line pep still does with slow CB.. you also had mahrez, a insanely good gundo, kdb, laporte, stones, Alvarez.. team was a lot better.. you can even argue the quality has gone down but we also changed the way we play. It’s boring, it’s slow, there is no purpose… genuinely feels like when we attack we have no idea what to do.. just recycle the ball and the defense sits and waits for a counter.. and it keeps happening for the past two seasons now..
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We haven’t changed the way we play completely at all yes, the personnel have changed fair enough
 
Gordyola said:
We haven’t changed the way we play completely at all yes, the personnel have changed fair enough
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I beg the differ.. we slow it down a lot more now.. we don’t counter nearly as good as we used to and when we do again we slow it down.. especially if doku is playing.. he stops runnings then squares up to his man and tries to beat him.. by the time he does that the entire defense is back in position and gets harder..
 
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