Erling Haaland’s romp to 50 goals in record time was met with a shrug by Pep Guardiola. Haaland is Haaland. There is little more to say.
Whilst Haaland’s crisp dispatch was a vivid example of his lethal capacity and very much pleased his boss with its technical quality, Guardiola does not see actions in isolation. His mind maps the pitch differently. He was blown away not so much by his era-defining hitman but another who joined Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund in 2022, and who appears just as important to his evolving vision.
At £17m Manuel Akanji might just represent one of the most astute acquisitions of the Abu Dhabi regime. This is a sentiment Guardiola shares. Had there been more like him, City might not be answering 115 charges relating to alleged financial irregularities, denied though they are.
“What a signing the club has done there,” Guardiola said after Akanji stepped in and out of midfield with the dexterity of a Beckenbauer or Baresi.
“Hats off to him. The game at Chelsea the same. At Stamford Bridge and today he was unbelievable. He can play full-back, central defender, holding midfielder. When he arrives in the final third he has the ability to make passes. He is fast, strong. What a player Txiki [Begiristain, director of football] gave me.”
The words poured out in kind of reverie. As they might. Akanji’s control of the deep midfield space alongside Rodri was absolute, and this against Liverpool’s revamped engine driven by Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai.
It is astonishing to reflect how little City miss the injured Kevin De Bruyne and the departed Ilkay Gundogan, the midfield axis upon which the Treble was built.
Guardiola’s ability to recycle his squad and evolve systems without any obvious diminution in output is one of the attributes that makes him special, and which is carrying City forward at a dizzying pace despite the result on Saturday. Of course he has a sovereign wealth fund at his disposal, that may or may not have been used without the rules. Nevertheless having money to spend is only part of the equation, as Chelsea and Manchester United continue to demonstrate.
Whilst Mykhailo Mudryk and Antony regress to varying degrees at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford respectively, Jeremy Doku, another Begiristain jewel, albeit more costly than Akanji at £52m, astonishes with his high-octane menace. Doku is a ball of fast-twitch evil, capable of violent direction changes that are impossible to counter. Jack Grealish was absent with illness on Saturday. You can’t imagine watching Doku made him feel any better.
It is a measure of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s accelerating maturity, as well as Mohammed Salah’s willingness to track back, that Liverpool’s right side of defence did not wilt completely. A second successive draw for City, and the first points dropped at the Etihad in 2023 might be considered a gift to the Premier League, allowing the idea that the title race is a thing to persist at least a little longer.
Liverpool left with a point that looked unlikely until Alexander-Arnold smoked an equaliser ten minutes from the end of normal time. After failing to win a match here since 2015 Jurgen Klopp was grateful to remain within a point of City in the table, accepting in tone if not in word that Liverpool were barely a match for City for chunks of this game.
Klopp hoped his reshaped squad might out-beast City in attitude if not physically. Klopp’s record at the Etihad is not good, but his teams are among the few to have met swagger with swagger on occasion.
They didn’t and as a result this felt a bit like an ambush, with Klopp bemoaning how little time he had to drill his boys into shape following the international break. The selection of Curtis Jones ahead of Ryan Gravenberch did not work either, the former replaced early in the second half.
The points might still have gone to City had VAR not favoured Alisson over Akanji in the challenge that led to Ruben Dias side-footing home before Liverpool’s equaliser.
And at the close Haaland’s header from a corner bounced narrowly the wrong side of a post. Had it gone in, Klopp could not have screamed injustice.
No blame attaches to the Norse behemoth for that. He had already left an indelible mark on the day, his 50th goal relegating Andy Cole into second in the Premier League’s scoring ledger. As Gary Neville remarked, the Premier League is lucky to have him.
For all the greats that have played in England, Haaland is from a different register, a superstar beyond, at least for now, the powerful orbits of Real Madrid and Barcelona, traditional hosts to galacticos of Haaland’s scale.
The next 50 will likely come just as quickly firing City towards a future unimagined when the fans stood on the Kippax and the Etihad was just another airline in the Gulf. No amount of retrospective punishment, should it come to pass, will derail that.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/Woskqe3
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