By the end he (Haaland) had taken 16 touches, won zero headers, made no interceptions or dribbles, completed seven passes, and produced a willing but ultimately futile exercise in trapped energy, like an oversized fly bobbling its way down a window pane.
The sight of Haaland on the City team sheet was an instant adrenaline spike: all those vowels, the symmetry of the consonants. Even his name is a unit.
Great result.
Hopefully this will let other teams have a go at city’s and their defense with quick wingers and tall strikers.
Haaland v Kane who is the ugliest 
It’s a draw though 'Arry edges it in his vocals.
Mahrez is looking really sharp, but I’m glad he was channelling his inner Sterling in front of goal yesterday.
It quite literally popped out in front of him. It would have taken a lifetime wino already with his beer goggles on not to be aware of that chance and even then, the wino would probably have gotten wind of it and tapped it in.
“There would have been no great gain in doing the things Haaland did here more energetically, in being ineffective with a greater intensity. By the end he had taken 16 touches, won zero headers, made no interceptions or dribbles, completed seven passes, and produced a willing but ultimately futile exercise in trapped energy, like an oversized fly bobbling its way down a window pane.”
Sixteen touches and seven passes. In a Man City team. In 99 minutes of play. That is mind boggling.
Haaland looks like a flat-track bully. He will score tons of goals against lesser opposition, but will struggle against sides that nullify his attacking threat. A well organized back line backed up with counter attacking forwards will definitely create problems to this City lineup.
That doesn’t sound mean. Mean would be to wish injury on him.
I hope the stylistic disconnect renders them inconsistent and less of a threat than the last few seasons. I hope their gluttony re buying the most expensive and shiny toys is the destruction of their dreams. Fuck them.
I agree with @Euphoria in that Kane would have fitted in with them.
He drops deeper and us more involved in the play than Haaland. Whilst Haaland is a serious goal threat, Kane is probably a better thinking footballer.
All that said, I think its early to write Haaland off, after one poor performance. He has the strength and capacity to learn, whether he has the broad skillset to be a different type of player remains to be seen.
I think he would develop better with Klopp than with Pep…
Anyway as @Limiescouse suggests the stylistic difference might just be too wide a chasm.
Haaland is a huge talent. But if he struggles in few more games, it will start to wear him down.
Eerrmmm.
I’m finding the City owner angle on this the most fascinating aspect. “We must have the biggest and best in everything” attitude and no matter what the cost is. No thought given to balance and harmony.
Haalands arrival signals a full on reset of how City play. That will take some time. Also what happens when he doesn’t play. Do they revert to something else meaning that they will potentially flip flop between set ups and tactics. Throw in Peps need to fiddle things might get a little rocky.
Still I can see them still being challenging for the title but I suspect they’ve added a few more hurdles for themselves.
Pep obviously decided to fix it, even though nothing was broken.
It’s been one game, so the only ones writing him off are the ones that labelled El Hadji Diouf the GOAT after getting a brace on his home debut. You can safely ignore them.
Having said that, as a Liverpool fan, of course we want Haarland to have a Romelu Lukaku like impact for them. Anyway, when he does start banging them in, our Mo will not give up his golden boot so easily.
Hell no. Another day, he scores twice.
I’m more interested in the impact he has on the other team members. They might be a little off balance for a while as they try to accommodate him. Hope so.
Wasn’t Aguero looking to get moved on when Pep first game because he wouldn’t be the type of link up. He then changed his game and became more involved. Think Haaland will need to, as he looked very disconnected from the team. You could see they added creator type players like Grealish and Mahrez on the wings to get Haaland chances, whilst he did have some. Don’t think a system change is worth what was created. They looked a lot better with Sterling
We’re more than a match for them in head-to-heads and fancy us everytime in CL or cups. Unfortunately I think they’ll continue to batter everyone else in PL, even more so with Haaland
Kane is a MUCH better stylistic fit for how they play and a much easier transition to going back to a more orthodox forward. Harry is pretty much as all around a forward as you’ll see. Haaland is very much a north-south running forward who has shown no real particular strength in scoring on balls put in from wide positions. Give City a bunch of possession around the box and then just pump a ball into the box for a big guy to get on the end of…Kane would score those goals. Haaland despite his size and an upbringing in football cultures who thrive with that sort of football has never shown much of a strength with that.
Someone else has already mentioned it, but I think Werner is the comparison to keep in mind. Haaland is a much better player than he is, but their instincts are similar and they balls they look for are the same. We’ve seen how clueless Werner has looked when there isnt space in behind to exploit and he has to figure out a different way to get involved. Haaland will be in that position in pretty much every game he plays for City. That space he has made him name exploiting wont be there. So even against the bottom feeders where people expect Haaland to score the majority of his goals he is going to have to figure out a way to score goals differently than the majority he has scored throughout his career.
I think with Donkey Dolph…its first impressions…and yesterday, for him, wasn’t a good day…and to have a bad day ‘at the office’ against us was quite unfortunate…obviously he’ll score somewhere, somehow …but his no show yesterday, just gave us more entertainment…
Lol. Haaland is a quality player. Saying anything else is clutching at straws. Luckily we have a few quality players of our own!