After all the sparring, heavyweight Haaland delivers two crushing blows

With 64 minutes gone at a chokingly hot London Stadium Erling Haaland killed this Premier League game with a goal that carried its own dreamy sense of deja vu. It was a goal that already felt like a repeat, like something emerging out of traces in the air, a bend in the space-time continuum. How many times has this happened, that rangy, slanted figure, veering in from the right, the sense of a familiar reel of film playing out?

Haaland’s second goal of this game, the second of his Premier League debut, felt like confirmation of the old truism. Knowing what your opponent is about to do is one thing. Actually being able to stop it is something else. And Haaland was very good in this 2-0 defeat of West Ham, really very good indeed after the clumsiness of the Community Shield game. Even better, he was good in a way that was entirely his own. Adaptation you say? Fine, yes, good. But how about we just score some goals first.

It felt significant that West Ham had begun to commit players forward before that decisive moment, chasing the game at 1-0 down. Suddenly there was space. No, really. You don’t want to leave space. Kevin De Bruyne picked up the ball 15 yards inside the City half with grass in front of him and time to start measuring the distance, the physics, the moving objects in his arc. Haaland had begun to sprint – and not just to open up a gap or create a diversion, but running towards goal, radar fixed. He collected the perfect pass through the perfect channel, veered just enough to his right, switched feet and slid the ball past Alphonse Areola.

There was a clarity to this, an equation that will repeat: the pass, the run, the precisely metered acceleration. For all the talk of changes of style, what City have