Erling Haaland can just stand and watch – and do his job for Man City at the same time

“Pep will not like me for saying this, but they don’t need me,” Erling Haaland said. “I can just stand there and watch.”

There was context, of course, the most important being the fact that he had scored Manchester City’s first goal of their opening-weekend 2-0 win away to Chelsea. They very much needed him for that.

The rest of the context is that the striker was talking about City’s overall build-up play, and how he fits into it. Or doesn’t. “When you see all the defenders, how good they played to the midfielders, it looked like, Pep will not like me for saying this…” and continued with the unflattering description of his all-round game.

But there was more.

“I want to get more involved, that’s what Pep wants,” Haaland added in a post-match interview with Sky Sports, the game’s UK broadcaster. “But in games like this, do I need to be that more involved? That’s the million-dollar question.”

This was, in many ways, the classic Haaland performance. Deadly finish, three successful passes in the 90 minutes, go home happy.

One of those passes was when he popped up in the corner in front of the travelling City fans in the dying moments, helping his team see the game out after Mateo Kovacic had ended it as a contest by scoring the second goal on 84 minutes.

This is Haaland’s third season at City and it is not like his place in the team is uncertain: if he is fit, he plays, and it cannot be said that things do not work with him in the side. Do they play better football now than they did before he joined them? Arguably not, but they must be more effective because the trophies — especially the treble in his debut season — speak for themselves.

But there is something about the whole thing that makes it look like it does not work, even when it obviously does, which was the case again at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Not only did Haaland score the first goal, taking exactly the right amount of touches before clipping in a clever finish, but he probably should have assisted another, only for a foul to somehow be given against him.

But how can you complete three passes in a whole match, in this team, on a day when City had much less control than they normally do, and still play that kind of big part in a winning performance?

“I want to help the team and make the team work to get players into good positions,” Haaland continued. “To get an extra metre for my team-mates. If I can stretch the centre-backs with a run, it’s hard, but it’s my job.”

Those runs certainly add an extra dimension for Pep Guardiola’s Premier League champions, especially because when it is him making them, the opposition know they have to react. Haaland cannot be left one-v-one with the majority of defenders in the league, so teams adapt to the threat of what he might do, let alone what he actually does. That is never going to change, so he is always going to bring something even on his worst day.

“He didn’t have many touches but when he does, more than likely it’s a goal,” Chelsea defender Levi Colwill told U.S. broadcaster NBC after the match, referring to Haaland. “You have to be concentrated, around the box, that’s his area. When the ball goes wide, you’ve got to know where he is. He’s a very good player and a lot to deal with. Good players score chances like he did today.”

If Chelsea had taken their chances, Haaland’s three completed passes might have been looked upon differently — ‘He scored a goal, but does he do enough?’. The number of touches he has in a given match has been totted up countless times, usually when he has not been very involved or City have failed to win.

Maybe he benefited from other circumstances yesterday but we are well beyond small-sample-size territory now. Usually, he scores, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he touches the ball a lot, often he doesn’t, but the end result is that City almost always win.

And he does more than stand and watch.

His goal on Sunday means he has scored 91 in 100 appearances for City. “It’s a number from Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo,” Guardiola said. “In terms of numbers, he is their level.” At the risk of putting words in Guardiola’s mouth, there is an important distinction: “in terms of numbers”, Haaland is on the same level as those two, but in terms of influencing matches in other ways, nowhere near.

That is, apparently, absolutely fine, and it brings us back to that million-dollar question.

Last season, there were headlines about Haaland being a “League Two player” in terms of his link-up play, which is obviously not the case, given he showed a much higher level in his first season. He did struggle with that in year two, though, and he did not look any sharper in pre-season this summer.

On the one occasion he did drop in to get the ball on Sunday, his pass never had the chance to be completed because Colwill ran up behind him and cleared him out.

Haaland rarely got involved in the game, although given the few times he actually offered, that was probably planned. Even when not running in behind, he can just stand up with the centre-backs, occupying them, creating space in midfield for others to play in.

City have plenty of players comfortable doing that, which is why their centre-forward can afford to stand and watch, all the while doing his job.

(Top photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)