Manchester City ace Haaland ready to scale new heights

“Underwhelming”, reckoned The Sun, registering a consensus among the British media at their first sight of Erling Haaland in action for Manchester City in England. An “unimpressive bow”, “inauspicious” wrote The Independent about the new, feted centre-forward after he squandered two goalscoring chances in a 3-1 defeat to Liverpool in the 2022-23 season’s curtain-raiser - the Community Shield.

Through the debris of so many broken records and from the towering heights of an unprecedented City treble, Haaland and his club can look back on that tepid start with a wry smile. As City prepare to take on Arsenal this weekend in another Community Shield clash, the questions, 12 months on, are no longer about how quickly Haaland fits in but how rapidly he zooms past even more statistical landmarks.

His first season in England turned out spectacularly well. Having drawn a blank on his official City debut, Haaland would wait until mid-October until he next went through a game without at least a goal or an assist.

Thirty-six minutes into his opening Premier League game, against West Ham United, he had his first competitive strike after his €60m move from Borussia Dortmund and, by the end of that afternoon, the first of his six braces so far for City. There would also be five Haaland hat-tricks and, gloriously, five goals in a single evening against RB Leipzig during the heady journey to City’s maiden European Cup triumph.

All told, Haaland scored 52 times – and directly assisted nine more goals – in his 53 matches. If there were occasional mutterings about his low number of touches of the ball in a team that so values possession, those who dwelt on them soon sounded as if they were splitting hairs. “He will make defenders’ lives in