The rest of the Premier League has a problem and it’s not entirely clear how they are going to solve it. It was reported in the wake of Erling Haaland’s evisceration of Crystal Palace at the weekend that top-flight coaches are already trading tips on how best to play against him. Unfortunately for this emerging brains trust, the only manager to successfully stop the Manchester City striker from getting on the scoresheet so far this season has already been sacked.
There’s not much use asking David Moyes, Eddie Howe or Patrick Vieira either. Despite their best efforts, they all failed to come up with an effective plan of action against the Norwegian, and you can now add Steve Cooper to that list. It was put to the Nottingham Forest manager that Haaland is the only player to score nine goals in his first five Premier League games, then he was asked if he had ever come across a centre-forward like him. “No, if that’s the case, what you just said” Cooper replied. “The facts state that.”
