Man City superhuman Erling Haaland has what it takes to beat Lionel Messi landmark

The strong word is that Ralph Hassenhuttl’s number is almost up at Southampton. Safe to say the Austrian, the fourth longest-serving manager in the Premier League, would prefer a different fixture to act as the make-or-break game to decide his future than Saturday’s trip to Manchester City.

At City, Erling Haaland’s numbers are certainly up. And up. And up. After the Norwegian scored his 18th and 19th City goals against FC Copenhagen on Wednesday, it became clear that perhaps this only way to prevent Haaland on current form from scoring a hat-trick in every outing at the Etihad is to restrict him to only 45 minutes of action – or to let the defenders marking him lose their bearings so badly they start doing his scoring for him.

Poor David Khocholava has his name next to City’s third in the 5-0 win over the Danish side, because a loose ball, heading towards a lurking Haaland, ricocheted off Copenhagen’s Denis Vavro before then deflecting off Khocholava for an own goal.

At that point, Kamil Grabara, the luckless visiting goalkeeper, could no longer disguise his exasperation. He made a remark to Haaland’s City colleague, Jack Grealish, that caused Grealish to smile. “I think it was after the third goal, their keeper said to me: ‘This guy’s not human'," revealed Grealish.

The superhuman was taken off at half-time, his goal ratio since he joined City from Borussia Dortmund in the summer by then trimmed to one every 50 minutes of action. Take away his blank competitive debut in the Community Shield at the beginning of August, and he’s averaging a goal per every half-match he has played in the competitions that City value highest: the Champions League and the Premier League.

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