Erling Haaland looks lost to remind Manchester City this will take time

OK. This might take a while. Just talk among yourselves. For Erling Haaland this was a debut not just to forget, but to shred, incinerate and bury at the bottom of the garden. Haaland looked limb-weary by the end of this clammy high-summer Community Shield final, a curtain-raiser for a stage that has scarcely been cleared of tables and men in brown coats.

For much of the second half at the King Power Stadium Haaland skulked and mooched in the centre circle. With seconds left he produced a wonderfully wholehearted miss, clumping his shot off the top of the bar with all the easy grace of a man toe-poking a crumpled beer can into a hedge.

Most of the time Haaland looked like what he is, an entirely different kind of player to his teammates, and a man who will of course need time, regardless of his record to this point. It is no secret Manchester City’s outstanding summer addition lacks fitness, but this is more an issue of fitness, of his own tessellation with the way City play.

There would have been no great gain in doing the things Haaland did here more energetically, in being ineffective with a greater intensity. By the end he had taken 16 touches, won zero headers, made no interceptions or dribbles, completed seven passes, and produced a willing but ultimately futile exercise in trapped energy, like an oversized fly bobbling its way down a window pane.

New team, new style, new plans: but these are remarkable numbers. Has any player ever played 90 minutes in a Pep Guardiola team and completed seven passes?

In the event Haaland was upstaged by Darwin Núñez, who came on with half an hour to go and made one and scored one in Liverpool’s convincing 3-1 win. Núñez provided an obvious counterpoint, a footballer instantly at