Paul Merson has claimed that Manchester City star Julian Alvarez is as good a finisher as Erling Haaland.
The Argentine scored the winning goal in City’s previous Premier League match against Newcastle United last weekend.
Now though, with the Citizens set to take on Sheffield United at Bramall Lane for their latest league outing, one pundit has dropped a rather big claim on City’s World Cup winner.
Merson says Alvarez is as good a finisher as Haaland
Written in his latest column for Sportskeeda previewing this weekend’s latest round of Premier League fixtures, Merson had this to say about Alvarez.
He said: “Julian Alvarez is an amazing goalscorer, and I’d say he’s up there with Erling Haaland when it comes to finishing. He will play more this season because Manchester City don’t have a choice, do they?”
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Last season saw the 23-year-old score nine goals in 31 Premier League appearances, racking up a goals per shot rate of 0.17 and goals per shot on target rate of 0.4.
In comparison to Haaland, he ended the previous league campaign with a goals per shot rate of 0.25 and goals per shot on target rate of 0.55.
This shows that the Argentine wasn’t as clinical as the prolific Norwegian, which suggests that Merson may be exaggerating when he says that Alvarez is as good a finisher as Haaland.
However, even though the Norway international gets a lot of attention for his impressive goalscoring efforts, it’s nice to hear Merson giving praise to Alvarez on this occasion, who will now be hoping to get his name on the scoresheet again this weekend against the Blades.
Looking beyond that, if the attacker is likely to get more minutes in the team this season as Merson suggested, he’ll no doubt be hoping he can score more goals than he did last season and improve his overall game.