A brilliant team are demolishing even closest rivals and can make history. But glory lies in drama as well as excellenceManchester City are brilliant. They can win games with and without the ball. They can stifle teams with possession or eviscerate them on the counter. They can produce moments of breathtaking combination play but also have in Erling Haaland a centre-forward with a set of attributes, physical and technical, that has been seen only perhaps half a dozen times before. They are magnificent and seemingly on course for a treble. They are also a symptom of the financial structures that are destroying the game football was once understood to be.The naive and the wilfully blind will say there have been...
With the independent commission to come and Arsenal up next, beating Aston Villa didn’t really seem like the major issueA white sky almost entirely leached of colour. A damp bite to the air. A general sense of unease around the Etihad. Could the last decade of Manchester City success be erased or tainted by an independent panel hearing the charges brought by the Premier League? Quite possibly, but in the here and now, after a straightforward win over Aston Villa, City will go top of the Premier League if they beat Arsenal at the Emirates on Wednesday.Even in the wake of last Monday’s Premier League charges, it would be difficult to portray this as a defiant victory, a club under...
Cancelo is gone as Pep strips back his squad to a sleeker team that better suits Haaland’s energies, so Spurs must bewareAntonio Conte likes to talk about suffering. There is a limit to all things, however, and the suggestion of an unexpected appearance on the touchline on Sunday afternoon despite midweek surgery to relieve the unconscionable agony of an agitated gall bladder may be a step beyond even Conte’s powers of defiance.Still there is something unavoidably resonant about the world’s most gloweringly inflamed football manager having problems with an organ medieval science identified as the source of the choleric emotions: fury, aggression, ambition, impatience. This is what a year and a half of managing Tottenham will do to you. They...
Great strikers win games and yet they can disrupt tactical systems where dominating the ball is crucial – just like at CityErling Haaland is a phenomenon. It’s not just that he has scored 22 goals already this season, plus a further five goals in the Champions League. It’s the sense he offers of being unstoppable: almost unbeatable for pace, almost impossible to knock off the ball and with a clinical eye for goal as well.His phlegmatic, almost flippant, personality makes him more terrifying. He jokes about the secret target he has set himself for this season. He is not some driven self-improver: he scores goals in record-breaking numbers seemingly because he finds it funny. He plays football like the early...
The striker was largely subdued at Stamford Bridge, which in itself caught the eye as the champions displayed their class It took less than two minutes at Stamford Bridge for Pep Guardiola, dressed for a mild January night in a Captain Haddock outfit of navy blue roll neck and chunky black shoes, to appear on his touchline and begin whirling his arms in a series of lightning-fast rotational gestures.Guardiola whistled and pirouetted. He summoned Erling Haaland and machine-gunned him with tactical instructions. Haaland nodded. What was Pep saying here? Look a bit more menacing? Walk around a bit more? At this stage the game was 90 seconds old. Continue reading...