The great Erling Haaland goal drought spanned 20 days and 333 minutes of football. Almost long enough to watch the entirety of Fawlty Towers and definitely long enough to invite questions if a prolific striker made Manchester City faulty. There was a counter-argument that they were not worse, but that Pep Guardiola was malfunctioning instead, his strange selections hampering City, until the patron saint of midfielders may have become a convert to the centre-forward’s cause as he prospered by sacrificing his beloved technicians for another attacker.
When Tottenham scored two goals in three minutes, a third successive defeat beckoned for Guardiola. When City responded with two in three, both came courtesy of men who are strikers by trade. Crowbarring Julian Alvarez and Haaland into the same team took some doing for Guardiola; they found it easier to find the net, the Argentinian with a poacher’s strike, the Norwegian with a target man’s header. A comeback was completed by a double from Riyad Mahrez, the winger who top-scored for City last season, in the days when Guardiola took his concept to its logical extreme and won the league in a side shorn of strikers. It was fashioned, however, by a presence or two in the penalty box.
