At half-time of a rare Saturday where both Manchester City and Liverpool kicked off at 3pm, you could feel the knives being sharpened. City were 2-0 down at Crystal Palace, 45 minutes from a first defeat of the season, while Liverpool were 5-0 up against Bournemouth on their way to a Premier League record-equalling 9-0 win.
Despite the five-point gap between the sides going into the game, and Liverpool still looking for their first win, it was all set up for a week of hearing about how Liverpool are back, and City's defence isn't good enough to win the title. Then Erling Haaland stepped up, with his hat-trick helping City to a remarkable 4-2 comeback win, taking his tally to six goals in four games.
It's a far cry from his opening domestic appearance, where Liverpool managed to keep him quiet and an uncharacteristic late miss welcomed weeks of questions over whether he would cut it in the Premier League. Four games later and he's answered that emphatically, although a closer look at Liverpool's 9-0 win shows he still has a long way to go to get acceptance from the wider country.
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Nobody can deny Haaland has started the season in dangerous form. Analysis of his supposed lack of touches has been rendered irrelevant due to his goal return with the touches he does have. As Pep Guardiola pointed out on Saturday, his movement and awareness to be ready when a chance comes are as impressive as the goals themselves - and a big reason for why he's got them.
However, in that Community Shield defeat to Liverpool, he was largely kept quiet, and that glaring six-yard miss in injury time wasn't his finest moment. It prompted every pundit going try to doubt whether he has what it takes to replicate his Bundesliga form in the Premier League, and has still been used against him in the opening weeks of the season.
Now, he should have put those doubts to bed. He's scored tap-ins, close-range headers, cool and powerful one-on-one finishes, and a brilliant penalty. Next time he's in a position like the Liverpool game, he'll score it. He already has.
And when he sat down with his match ball on Saturday and put on Match of the Day, he may have found it interesting to see Mo Salah go goalless in Liverpool's 9-0 demolition. Not because Salah didn't score, but because he was guilty of missing two glaring chances that have largely gone unnoticed.
First, Salah had an open goal at the back post and somehow managed to hit it wide from inside the posts two yards out. Then, a slightly harder chance saw him send another close-range effort over after being chipped in on goal, albeit under some pressure. He's scored plenty of those before, though, and should definitely have hit the back of the net.
This isn't to say Salah is a bad player, because of course he isn't. Just like Haaland isn't a bad player on the evidence of one chance. It's a reminder that even the best miss good chances, or have days when it just doesn't happen.
Jurgen Klopp will look for Salah to respond in his next game, like Haaland did at West Ham, and it's a safe bet that he will quickly repay all those Fantasy Football managers in disbelief that Liverpool won 9-0 and Salah got no goals or assists.
The chances are, though, that Salah's off-day won't be talked about nearly as much as Haaland's was. And when Salah rediscovers his form, the Bournemouth misses will be forgotten as if they never happened. Salah's brilliant record in recent years gives him that luxury, although City may have to get used to Haaland having more scrutiny for any wrong move, while others are allowed to simply put it behind them.
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