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City poised for Haaland encounter after latest attacking masterclass

Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne in action against Leicester City's Youri Tielemans at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. Photo: Tim Keeton/Reuters Expand

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Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne in action against Leicester City's Youri Tielemans at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. Photo: Tim Keeton/Reuters

Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne in action against Leicester City's Youri Tielemans at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. Photo: Tim Keeton/Reuters

Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne in action against Leicester City's Youri Tielemans at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. Photo: Tim Keeton/Reuters

Jim White

On the start line of the beauty parade now surrounding the future of Erling Haaland, the world’s most coveted footballer, Manchester City find themselves in pole position.

Pep Guardiola’s team play Borussia Dortmund – the Norwegian striker’s current employers – tomorrow night in a Champions League quarter-final.

There can be no better opportunity to give practical demonstration of the delights he might find were he to fetch up in east Manchester this summer.

Especially if City play as they did at the King Power on Saturday when, in casually swatting aside the third best-placed team in the Premier League, they recorded their 15th away win on the bounce.

Tomorrow, Haaland can watch wide-eyed as Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden serve up chance after chance. He can daydream about getting on the end of the kind of sumptuous pass Kevin De Bruyne delivered to flummox Leicester’s defence ahead of City’s second goal.

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And, most of all, he can imagine what he might achieve were he to sign on as Sergio Aguero’s direct replacement.

Stay for a decade and win things like the great Argentine and a statue outside the stadium could be his. Aguero was called upon Saturday for only the sixth time this season.

With Sterling, Foden, John Stones and Ilkay Gundogan given a rest after their international exertions, he was brought into the starting line-up by a manager as ever careful to ease his squad through the exigencies of attempting the quadruple.

That was not a luxury available to his opposite number. Brendan Rodgers was obliged to play Kelechi Iheanacho, his man of the moment, even though he had returned from international duty with Nigeria only on Thursday.

He duly delivered the least-convincing performance of this, his breakthrough season.

Mind, in truth, it was not Aguero’s finest outing in a City shirt either, enjoying just 21 touches and two shots, both off target. His most memorable contribution was getting in the way of Fernandinho’s first-half shot while in an offside position.

There were moments when he looked as if he were not quite in tune with City’s new fluid way, of false nines and constant movement, as if his lurking predatory skills were no longer needed by a team who had moved on.

Indeed, Guardiola has been sceptical about any requirement to chase Haaland; maybe he no longer needs a main man up front.

As was demonstrated against a stubborn, compact, organised Leicester, he has a system now that can operate without an old-school striker, that no longer requires a spearhead.

The most telling thing about this City side – and a mark of the width of the gap that the rest of the Premier League have to scale to give them a proper challenge – is how adaptable they are.

In every fixture, there is a tactical switch to counter the strength of the opposition. Against Fulham in their previous league fixture, aware that Scott Parker would man-mark his midfield, Guardiola played a back three, using Stones at right-back as his most creative outlet.

Against Leicester, it was completely different. Acknowledging that so much of Rodgers’ side’s forward momentum came from Youri Tielemans, Guardiola ordered City midfielders to swarm round him every time he had the ball, his space squeezed like a clamp. As a result, Leicester were muted.

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Watching this at close quarters, Haaland may well seek to instruct Mino Raiola, his busy agent, to be receptive to any advance by the City hierarchy.

But he will also know that, to find a place in such a system, he will need to adapt, be prepared to sit out some fixtures, expand his game beyond mere predation.

The rest of the Premier League will be hoping that a combination of Raiola’s ego and the need to adapt into a system in which it is the squad that matters will see Haaland head elsewhere.

Because, frankly, the thought of the striker joining a side already this much better than any other will suggest that, never mind this season, the rest might as well give up hope for the next as well. Not to mention the one after that.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]

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