SebastianBlue
President, International Julian Alvarez Fan Club
- Joined
- 25 Jul 2009
- Messages
- 57,736
In the games to which you are referring the opposition usually sets up specifically to stop him from getting chances, often committing multiple players to that goal, and actually have the quality to do it, but it almost always open up space for other players like Phil, Kev, or Rodri to take their chances. Sure, he has the odd off game, but most of the time he contributes a lot to the overall success of the team, even when he isn’t scoring. And when he is being double- or triple-teamed, other players need to step up; when they don’t is when we often have issues, which I think has been the case this season at times, mostly due to the fatigue from last season’s treble exploits.
But, even given all that, and the tactics he has faced, he has scored or assisted against many of the “top” teams.
He runs rampant in games like this because the opposition don’t have the quality to stifle him, even with numbers, so he can actually get on the end of chances.
I think we need to move past this narrative that “Haaland doesn’t show up in the big games”. It is overly simplistic, inaccurate, and disrespectful to his contributions to our overall play in those games.