Haaland seems like City, even moreso with the sale City just made.
Yeah. They're my guess too:
1. They don't have a 9 and Kane will stay with Conte there. I can see why they wouldn't have bought one, but with their money they could bring in one on loan and while people say Pep doesn't care if he has one, he wanted Kane and he's gotta be beyond desperate to win a CL there and they might have a QF or Semi-Final against a team parking the bus and having a plan B type makes sense even for him.
2. As you say, they've just sold their closest thing to a conventional 9 since Pep doesn't seem to think it's Gabi Jesus' best position with his tactics.
3. They've mostly done the smart thing and even if Haaland underperforms his absurd start and scores 2 goals in 3 and not one per game that'll be worth whatever they pay unless he gets hurt.
4. Pep will eventually leave and basically every other manager in the world would want Haaland more.
5. Barca don't have money and he's a 9 and they just bought theirs, Lewandowski is still at Bayern and they're scared to have this blow up in their face and they won't spend what Raiola demands anyways, Madrid have Benzema still and are about to add a 9 they can't even play in his best 2 positions because Vinicius is a star now, Chelsea just paid a ton for Lukaku, Liverpool is a dark horse, people think they don't spend that much but they did for Van Dijk and also spent huge on Allison and Haaland seems even safer a deal since he's as dominant as they were but with more years of production left than either (even with Allison being a keeper).
6. That leaves us as the other target, and I think we're just less attractive for Haaland, whose moves to Salzburg and then Dortmund was extremely logical and might have even been contingent on them selling the other 9 they had (Alcacer) shipped out and while he had injury issues, he also had 23 in 37 for Dortmund so selling him wasn't that logical a football move.
But, we have a Red Bull connection which might make him feel safe with the tactics rather than Pep ball, considering it didn't suit Ibra back at Barcelona and he might worry he'd be dropped for a year or two.
The counter would be that we have Greenwood and Rashford and might be better off spending hundreds of millions on addressing the weak spots we have that City don't at DM, CM (might even be a new expensive Pogba contract there if Rangnick takes a shine), RB and CB.
Most crucial, we aren't at this moment likely to make the CL as we have to beat out all 3 of West Ham, Arsenal and Spurs with Conte and while I might have us favorites against any one of them, it only takes one nice run from one to beat us out. I don't think he'd want to give up a CL season, even at 21.