Micah Richards has defended Manchester City striker Erling Haaland amid recent criticism of the player.
After failing to score a goal in City’s 1-1 draw against Chelsea, the striker bagged the winner in the Manchester club’s 1-0 win over Brentford, which led to Pep Guardiola saying that Haaland will silence any critics that question his goalscoring ability.
More recently, the 23-year-old scored five goals in City’s 6-2 win at Kenilworth Road against Luton Town in the FA Cup.
Following his impressive midweek performance, the striker has found himself being defended, but not in the sense that he’s used to on the pitch, by one pundit and former City player.
Richards annoyed by Haaland criticism
Speaking in a recent edition of The Rest Is Football alongside fellow co-hosts Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, Richards had this to say about Haaland and the recent criticism of him.
He said: “The only thing that annoys me so much about it is, regardless of if he’s playing at his top level or not, he’s going to score 20-25 goals a season anyway just from his movement because City create so many chances.
“Al, you actually said that, when City won the league without a number nine, you said once they get a number nine, he’s going to score 30, 40 goals just because he’ll be in the right positions.
“Yes, some of his link-up play isn’t as elegant as Harry Kane, but he’s in a team that are always creating chances so it’s irrelevant on that side when you’ve got [Phil] Foden and [Kevin] De Bruyne behind you, he’s always going to score goals.”
Last season saw the Norwegian score 52 goals in 53 appearances across all competitions, having failed to score in 12 of the 35 Premier League games he featured in.
At this stage of the current season, Haaland has played in 21 league games, scoring 17 goals but having 10 games where he didn’t find the net.
Taking into account how impressive he was last season in terms of scoring so many goals, we feel that because the striker has set the bar so high, any hint of him not reaching those levels results in questions being asked about his ability, whereas it wouldn’t for other strikers that don’t reach the numbers he has.
