Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City

He's just a bit more agile and all round version of Lukaku, nothing more than that, Highly system player. Interesting to see if Guardiola can find the way, or Haaland-ball will cost his job.
 
Poborsky's hair said:
He's just a bit more agile and all round version of Lukaku, nothing more than that, Highly system player. Interesting to see if Guardiola can find the way, or Haaland-ball will cost his job.
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I really don't think he is this kind of "system player". He thrived in a relatively chaotic Dortmund team and Norway also doesn't strike me as so much "system-focused" as City.
 
You can't blame Haaland for this downfall. He's obviously world class, but in this system he needs the rest of the team to perform at their best to even get a touch of the ball sometimes.

He just needs to feck off from there and play for a proper team. I'd actually go to somewhere like Bayern if I was him.

He is a cnut though.
 
Woodzy said:
You can't blame Haaland for this downfall. He's obviously world class, but in this system he needs the rest of the team to perform at their best to even get a touch of the ball sometimes.

He just needs to feck off from there and play for a proper team. I'd actually go to somewhere like Bayern if I was him.

He is a cnut though.
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There is blame on him thought. The times he has the ball, he is not doing great and as silly as it might sound, he must improve his aerial game and the physical aspect of the game from estatic positions, how to hold the ball better or learn how to pivot with his headers, plus in genral how to hold his ground better.

Leaving that aside, he is playing extremely estatic and I don't mean just in the offensive side of the game defensivly too. Given how he plays as a classic striker role, without an excessive physical demand, like many other City players must deal, he doesn't have for instance an excuse for not pressing in the last minutes of the last game to try to assure the victory or even the tie. That's just a little example, but he must improve in that area, even if it's just to randomly steal a ball and score when times are as dire as this one.
 
Poborsky's hair said:
He's just a bit more agile and all round version of Lukaku, nothing more than that, Highly system player. Interesting to see if Guardiola can find the way, or Haaland-ball will cost his job.
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As much as I detest him, I think it’s fair to say that a player who since he turned 19 has a goal a game for as wildly different teams as Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Man City, Norway U18/19/20/21 and Norway NT, scoring about 193 goals in 204 games, is an asset for just about any manager regardless of style.

You can talk about a player with 1 goal in 2 not being ‘worth it’ in terms of other areas of output, but he has 18 goals in 22 games for City this season even, and if anyone is The Problem it’s not him.

To say he will cost Pep his job is more strange even than to say he is the reason why City won the CL, the treble and four in a row.
 
It's a problem if they're losing because they're effectively playing with 10 men, even if he scores. You can almost compare it to starting each match with a red card and a 1-0 lead. That's not an advantage.
 
it's healthier to have several players on 8-9-10+ league goals than 90% of goals coming from a single player, regardless of how good he is.

they used to have that in Jesus, KDB, Sterling, Silva, Gundogan, Mahrez and Foden. their league top scorer in those days would be Gundogan or KDB with 13 goals and we used to say they don't even need a striker.

now they have striker hitting 25+ but everyone else is scoring less. they sold Alvarez, while Foden is having a bad season. they probably didn't expect him to be on 0 goals in the middle of december after being such a reliable scorer in past.

meaning, it's Haaland for the rest of the season and Gvardiol and KDB with occasional goal. you can't even say they fecked up with transfer, as nobody was bought to provide cover. the idea trully was to simply play Haaland the whole year.
 
Bole Top said:
it's healthier to have several players on 8-9-10+ league goals than 90% of goals coming from a single player, regardless of how good he is.

they used to have that in Jesus, KDB, Sterling, Silva, Gundogan, Mahrez and Foden. their league top scorer in those days would be Gundogan or KDB with 13 goals and we used to say they don't even need a striker.

now they have striker hitting 25+ but everyone else is scoring less. they sold Alvarez, while Foden is having a bad season. they probably didn't expect him to be on 0 goals in the middle of december after being such a reliable scorer in past.

meaning, it's Haaland for the rest of the season and Gvardiol and KDB with occasional goal. you can't even say they fecked up with transfer, as nobody was bought to provide cover. the idea trully was to simply play Haaland the whole year.
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...that plus Rodri, plus Kevin and Gundo older it's bad mix. More when the young guns are not delivering and some have less team oriented tendencies like Doku.
 
Grande said:
As much as I detest him, I think it’s fair to say that a player who since he turned 19 has a goal a game for as wildly different teams as Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Man City, Norway U18/19/20/21 and Norway NT, scoring about 193 goals in 204 games, is an asset for just about any manager regardless of style.

You can talk about a player with 1 goal in 2 not being ‘worth it’ in terms of other areas of output, but he has 18 goals in 22 games for City this season even, and if anyone is The Problem it’s not him.

To say he will cost Pep his job is more strange even than to say he is the reason why City won the CL, the treble and four in a row.
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Indeed, yet that doesn't take aside that Erling has to play better and improve his game in some aspects.
 
Poborsky's hair said:
He's just a bit more agile and all round version of Lukaku, nothing more than that, Highly system player. Interesting to see if Guardiola can find the way, or Haaland-ball will cost his job.
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I disagree, pretty much the opposite of a systems player. He scores the same rate every team he goes to. If he was more of a systems player he would suit Guardiola more.
 
I don't get the no service angle to a degree. He's had more shots than anyone in the league, more shots on target and with the highest xG too.

It's more true for 3 of the last 4 games with xG's of 0.14, 0.69, 0.17 and 0.19 (talking league only), but outside of that and when they played Wolves when he didn't have a shot he's still been getting loads of opportunities. His chance quality is fine too, 0.19 xG per shot attempted. Contrast that with Semenyo who is second in the league for most shots who takes pot shots from everywhere at 0.08 per shot.

His finishing has gone down since that early spell when was smacking them in for sure. 3 goals from 7.30 xG in his last 11 games is bad for any forward.

Still, that's 0.66 xG per 90 during this bad run which is elite. It's a little down on what we've come to expect from him but nothing too out of the ordinary. He's had no penalties in this time so it would only be right compare it to his previous non pen xG which was 0.81 and 0.75 the last 2 seasons. Small sample size so one big game would get it back over 0.7 easily and for the season overall he's on 0.77 on that metric.

Said this a few weeks ago, and agree with those who have been mentioning it the past day or two - his complete lack of involvement outside of taking shots is more prononuced than it's ever been. Down to 10.6 attempted passes per 90 which is ridculously low. He's always been that kind of player but it's now gotten worse. Last season it was 13.7, and it was 16.2 in 22/23.

Same story with that sort of thing if we look at where he's involved. Penalty box touches and attacking third touches about the same as always. It's the middle third touches that's going down each season from 9.42 per 90 to 7.25 to just 5.69 this season. Was never much involved in the buildup but now it's extreme.

Still think he's knackerted too, having to play 90 minutes every match since they sold Alvarez.
 
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Grande said:
You can talk about a player with 1 goal in 2 not being ‘worth it’ in terms of other areas of output, but he has 18 goals in 22 games for City this season even, and if anyone is The Problem it’s not him.
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He scored them 18 goals in 11 games. He has also failed to score in 11 games.

He has 3 PL goals in his last 11 games. He scored 10 in the first 5 games, which has massively inflated his stats

Who cares if he scored 10 in 5 games if he goes missing for the next 11 games.

He can only score if those around him are providing. A truly world class player can create their own chances and goals from nowhere.

He scores tap ins when the team dominates, but goes missing otherwise.
 
KeanoMagicHat said:
I disagree, pretty much the opposite of a systems player. He scores the same rate every team he goes to. If he was more of a systems player he would suit Guardiola more.
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3 in the last 11 suggests his scoring rate doesn't stay the same. His stats are inflated this season by scoring the majority of his goals in the first 5 league games.
 
The holy trinity 68 said:
He scored them 18 goals in 11 games. He has also failed to score in 11 games.

He has 3 PL goals in his last 11 games. He scored 10 in the first 5 games, which has massively inflated his stats

Who cares if he scored 10 in 5 games if he goes missing for the next 11 games.

He can only score if those around him are providing. A truly world class player can create their own chances and goals from nowhere.

He scores tap ins when the team dominates, but goes missing otherwise.
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Leaving Erling aside...

That's a thing that bothers me in this age, the glorification of hattricks and such. I almost hate them
I want a player to score a goal per match as much as he can in consecutive games or a great a goal per two games, regularly.
Too much emphasis on the final goal contribution without actually pointing how those goals were distributed
 
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Woodzy said:
You can't blame Haaland for this downfall. He's obviously world class, but in this system he needs the rest of the team to perform at their best to even get a touch of the ball sometimes.
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I think you kind of can blame him for that. Allegedly world class forward who touches the ball 20 times in a game and makes an average of 7 passes per game, and does absolutely nothing on and off the ball, unless the team crafts a gilded chance for him. Also in the bottom 2% of forwards for defensive contribution.

That's not world class at all. A world class player forward can make something happen. He's got nothing in his arsenal to help his team mates.

Any other player with his kind of participation stats you'd say he's shirking his responsibilities and hiding. But apparently, for Haaland hiding is part of his world class game.
 
The holy trinity 68 said:
He scored them 18 goals in 11 games. He has also failed to score in 11 games.

He has 3 PL goals in his last 11 games. He scored 10 in the first 5 games, which has massively inflated his stats

Who cares if he scored 10 in 5 games if he goes missing for the next 11 games.

He can only score if those around him are providing. A truly world class player can create their own chances and goals from nowhere.

He scores tap ins when the team dominates, but goes missing otherwise.
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I don’t know if you read the context of my answer. Reading your post makes me think you thought I was answering a post in the ‘Ronaldo vs Messi’ thread. I was answering a post were the claim was that Haaland was responsible for City’s slump to the extant that he would get Guardiola fired.

I’m not gonna discuss the epiphet ‘world class player’, given that I’ve never seen such a discussion not look stupid.

I dare you to find a list of players who has scored in more than half of their games this season in top 5 leagues. My guess is that a) your list will be fairly short, and b) none of the players in that list will be currently claimed to cost their coaches their job.

This is putting aside your unusual claim that ‘no one cares’ if a player scores 10 goals in 5 games if he ‘only’ scores 8 goals in the next 17 games, or ‘goes missing’ as you call it. I think quite a few care.

This is also putting aside the one goal per game stat he simultaneously delivers for a Norway were there are not really a wealth of ‘other players’ who ‘dominate’ anything at all.

I get that you don’t like him, he makes my skin crawl at times, but establishing weird criterions who doesn’t apply to any other player is not really reasonable, particularily not when the context is who is going to cost who what at Man City this season. If you’re going to say that this season’s Pep would have Rico Williams and Phil Foden score ten goals a piece if it hadn’t been for Haaland, I don’t think I’m going to believe you.
 
It's funny some here are calling him a system player when he's scored at an absurd rate for pretty much every club he's played at and also for country. All different systems and team qualities.

Every player suffers a downturn of form, shouldn't doubt his overall quality when he's finally starting to look human in his career.
 
I bit the bullet a few weeks ago and took him out of my fantasy team for the first time in 2 seasons. I thought I might end up regretting this but not so far.
 
He'll bag a hattrick against some fodder in a few weeks and the fawning will kick off again.
 
Maybe we will try and find him with a pass in behind at some point before may but recycling posession back to Kovacic or Akanji will probably be the right move for the rest of the season, seems to be working
 
Wild how he was touted to be the best striker in the PL ever last season. He's not even the best forward in the league today, let alone ever. Insulting to some of the best players ever.
 
Norwegian Lukaku is actually an insult to Lukaku at this point. Lukaku could struggle with first touch and finishing at times but he was never this invisible for weeks.
 
It’s fun to see him struggle. Can’t stand him. Hope he never recovers.
 
Tbf, City are creating very little for him.
They're so creatively flat and conservative with the ball that Haaland's runs aren't being picked out.
Also, City are shot for confidence.

What a drop off though.
 
He has never contributed much to teamwork, but alway seemed happy to get possession in the box a handful of times in a match and score in most games. You have to wonder what satisfaction he's getting from 90 minutes at the moment. Anyone else think that if City carry on like this he'll want out?
 
He’s just a lethal finisher, which is still a great thing to be. Lukaku being mentioned is funny because, without checking stats, my impression is he wasted way more big chances and generally had a good but not great conversion rate. A better comparison is maybe Inzaghi, who wasn’t as good an all around player as other strikers in his generation but was also lethal.

The rest of Haaland’s game is not that impressive. In a team producing a lot of chances for him, he’ll shine, but I’d take someone like Rooney over him every day of the week. He could finish, maybe at a slightly lower rate, but he could drop back and contribute to general play and literally drag his team up the pitch.
 
Poborsky's hair said:
He's just a bit more agile and all round version of Lukaku, nothing more than that, Highly system player. Interesting to see if Guardiola can find the way, or Haaland-ball will cost his job.
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We love to ridicule Lukaku in this forum, but there are some parts of his game that are better than Haaland's, such as passing technique and willingness to stretch opponent defence.

I was surprised that Guardiola is willing to accommodate Haaland into his system. Even better players than him (Ibrahimovic and Eto'o) didn't have that luxury. Maybe only because he was the only good striker in the market that justifies his price tag.
 
He's clearly not a shit player, and he's clearly miles better than fecking Lukaku. But I guess some just gotta get their shots in while they have the chance.
 
Well he's certainly not above the team - the greatest strikers in history turned games for their sides and often had them win or be competitive in games they had no right to be. Haaland doesn't have that in his locker at the age he is. Definitely a down with the ship CF at this moment in time.

He came into league looking like he'd one day challenge Dixie Dean's record. He's getting dragged back into the pack by the season now. Definitely won't be compared to the best of the best for the foreseeable.
 
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