Manchester City striker Erling Haaland failed to score in Manchester City’s 3-1 win over FC Copenhagen in the Champions League on Tuesday night and it was a quiet evening for the number nine.
City continued their amazing form of late, making it 11 wins in a row across all competitions.
Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Siva and Phil Foden were all on target for City, but Haaland was pretty uninvolved leading the line.
He did have a couple of half-chances, but by and large, it was a bit of a frustrating night for the big man.
Today, Haaland was a topic of conversation on talkSPORT, and Danny Murphy was full of praise for the 23-year-old…
Danny Murphy says Erling Haaland ‘weakness’ is actually a huge strength of his
There was talk today on talkSPORT about comments Pep Guardiola made about Haaland’s body language not being good in the first-half against Everton.
Eventually, Murphy made a point about Haaland’s style of play, and his role in this City team.
He believes that Haaland actually has fantastic positional discipline, which is something that a lot of people actually perceive as a weakness.
He said: “Haaland’s strength, is what most people perceive his weakness to be, which is his discipline and keeping his position and being patient. He does not care about looking good. He doesn’t care if he has 15 touches in a game.
“He keeps his position amazingly well, and it takes super discipline.
“All he does is he stays high. He keeps making the runs and he waits. Sometimes he’s walking, sometimes he looks a bit like he’s not involved. That’s what great centre-forwards do.”
Later on, Murphy went on to call Haaland ‘the best striker in the world’, describing him as ‘complete’.
Haaland is there for one thing, and one thing only
It is always interesting to hear the talk about Haaland when he doesn’t score and has a quiet game.
Murphy is right with what he says. Haaland – who was praised for having a strong mentality by Nathan Ake ahead of the game with Copenhagen – is there to score goals, and he does show great discipline in this City team that probes and probes before finding that opening.
It probably is a little frustrating for him at times.
But his goalscoring record since signing has obviously been phenomenal and he clearly benefits from largely staying in the penalty area and between the two posts.
