Fans and followers of the Premier League would’ve seen the drastic change in Pep Guardiola’s team from last season to this season, it being the inclusion of an out-and-out centre-forward in the side. Manchester City never replaced Aguero properly, and Jesus wasn’t favoured at CF, hence went with a false 9 for the majority of last season, a position which most of City’s attackers occupied at one point during the season. However, this Summer they have brought in two new centre-forwards to hopefully be the successor to Aguero: Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez.
Alvarez will no doubt be a great addition to the team as a squad player, but the player in focus is the Norwegian Erling Haaland. Haaland scored a total of 22 goals in 24 games last season in the Bundesliga, an incredible record. So far in the Premier League he has netted 9 goals in 5 appearances, the fastest to score 9 PL goals, and looks set to break Mohammed Salah’s 32 goal record across the entire season.
With Haaland appearing to be a direct goalscorer, Manchester City have had to change their style of play. Instead of using the CF (or false 9) in their build up, they appear to completely bypass Haaland so that he isn’t involved in the build-up. This is key as Haaland isn’t the best on the ball when building up, hence they limit his touches and build up around him. It also allows him to make runs in behind the defence utilising his rapid pace, instead of making him play back to goal and hold up the ball.
Again you can see this with his pass map. He completed 10 passes all game vs Nottingham Forest and all of them were in advanced positions. Haaland rarely drops deep for Manchester City, and rarely has to hold up and pass the ball off due to the excellent creators around him. His natural CF’s instinct and anticipation allows him to get into the correct positions and score many goal especially within 18 yards of the goal (penalty spot).
Based off of the data from Statsbomb of the 21/22 season, Haaland is in one of the extremes where he’s an excellent goalscorer and takes barely any touches. He’s in a category of Lautaro Martinez, Gianluca Scamacca and Victor Osimhen, all of which are elite forwards and show that it is possible to have a huge impact on a game without having much involvement in possession.
All these forwards have the instinct to be in the right position at the right time to score goals, proven by their high non-penalty goals per 90 statistic. Erling Haaland is someone who will succeed heavily at Manchester City due to the versatility of Pep Guardiola, the best coach in world football, who will get the best out of him by building such an appropriate system. Haaland already has 9 in the league, the first player to get back to back hat-tricks since Harry Kane in 2017, some excellent company at the top!
