Not really - the point I’m making is there are a lot of big games he hasn’t done enough in. I’ve tried to limit it to distinctly big games. And there will be more he hasn’t scored in, than has.
If you’re comfortable with his big game return then so be it. I look at that and am a bit disappointed. Feel free to include tough games against good defences or big occasions where he has scored to prove me wrong.
He was brought in to be the difference maker in these kind of games.
I would have expected him to score at least once in one of those games I mentioned…..my point isnt about goals per game, it’s the number of big games he hasn’t scored in or impacted enough.
And this sums it up to a tee.
When we signed Haaland I had one big concern about him at Dortmund, and that was that he doubled and trebled down on sides, often when the game was won, but failed to score in more games than he did, and looked like a bit of a plank in such games.
When we signed Haaland, we already had the best team in the world and one that scored a hell of a lot of goals. However, what we did have was a tendency to be profligate in some games, and we signed him to remedy that.
Of course, he's a great goalscorer against the poor to decent sides. In fact, in those games, he has an average akin to Dixie Dean at his peak. Is what we need, though, somebody who will score hat-tricks in games we are likely to win anyway? Do we need a stat-padder? When I'm looking at vital goals at vital times, I can see he did it a couple of times against Everton and Brentford and for that we were grateful, but there haven't been many other occasions. The goals come in spurts against teams who can't get a grip of us, and even then, he's far from prolific. He misses a sack load of sitters. He just happens to be the best in the world at losing poor defenders, and that skillset is the entire reason why he's so revered. Not because of the quality of his finishing.
The key issue is that in the big games we are playing with a sack of spuds up front who simply isn't contributing to the team. We are effectively playing with ten men, and top defences find him very easy to nullify.
I look at the truly great strikers and they don't always have to rely on service. Sergio Aguero, for example, was a proper footballer who could fashion chances for himself, who could score out of nothing. Haaland isn't fit to be mentioned in the same breath as Sergio, at least not the current version.
At the end of the day, if you use a flat goals to game ratio, then Haaland will always be up there with the greatest, but it masks a very real problem, and that is that the greatest goal scorer of all against crap defenders is actually rank average when playing against quality defenders. This wasn't what we bought him for.