Guardiola has found his most interesting Manchester City yet thanks to Haaland

Erling Haaland poses the professional writer a problem. Most of the time, he doesn’t do very much. He jogs towards the ball. He jogs away from the ball. He prowls and waits.

He had a grand total of 26 touches, which is quite a lot by his standards, but still comfortably fewer than both goalkeepers. And so discussing Haaland’s influence becomes something of an unsatisfying binary, pivoting around a single volatile question: did he score or not? If he did, his contribution is likely to have been decisive. If not, then you’ve spent 90 minutes watching a tall blond man look at things.

The point is this: Haaland is one of those players who is utterly inconsequential, right up until the moment he isn’t. With six minutes remaining in this taut, slow-burning Champions League group game you could be forgiven for failing to remember a single contribution he made.

Instead it was John Stones and Jude Bellingham – a man playing out of position, and a man playing every position – who were the obvious protagonists.

Stones provided the moment, slamming in the equaliser from distance. On the early evidence of the season, this is not Pep Guardiola’s best team, and nor is it his most beautiful team, but it may be his most interesting. There was a prevalent view on social media at half-time that this had been a fairly boring game. But City games can never be truly boring. The menace is all too present, the threat always implied if not always invoked, the squad too talented, too capable of outlandish and unspeakable feats.

However well you think you have them covered, they can always find another way to hurt you. And here it was Stones, with echoes of Vincent Kompany against Leicester and numerous Alex Ferguson teams past, who rose to the