Here it is then: Total Erling. Wherever this current iteration of Manchester City may end up, this was a night when the texture of Pep Guardiola’s team seemed to shift decisively, to take on new forms and new shapes.
Erling Haaland came to the Emirates Stadium with 25 Premier League goals this season. He left with 26, and with a sense, too, of finding his own new gears, of leading City’s attack in every moment of the game rather than wandering around finishing its sentences.
Haaland was a scalpel as well as a bludgeon. He ran through and indeed over the red shirts; but also moved sweetly and cleverly off the ball, producing a performance of all-round central attacking craft in the biggest game of the Premier League season to date.
By the end City were top of the league on goal difference; which is of course Haaland-difference these days. It is strange to think how recently this looked like a long-term pursuit for Pep Guardiola’s team. That lead is now eaten away. The skinny-legged figure haring along in the rear-view mirror, fists cleaving the air, has become a pounding presence, right there at the back window, all set to start wrenching open the rear door, grasping for the wheel, muttering about culture and process and being so, so happy.
More worrying for the rest of the field, there was a completeness to this performance. Arsenal were City’s match in the first half. By the end, as the blue shirts drove the game into painful spaces, as Haaland turned and rolled in City’s third goal in a 3-1 victory there was a sense of ignition. Arsenal still have a game in hand. But Haaland in particular looks like a man ready to devour the season from here.
The Emirates had been a fevered place at kick-off. Mikel Arteta picked a slightly awkward looking team, reprising his favoured big game Takehiro Tomiyasu gambit on the right. In the other corner Pep just went big. The front of City’s team was five sparkly midfielders plus Haaland. Maybe this is what happens when you no longer care if anyone raises an eyebrow at your accounts. Yep. This is us. Behold our suitcase of gold.
Guardiola came here dressed for business, albeit only if your business is middle-aged techno music producer who lives in a house called The Octagon. But he was utterly engaged here, out on his white line feeding on the energy. There has been a slight mania about Pep’s us-and-them take on City’s financial charges, the instant tribalism, the Darwinist sense of impunity. We didn’t break the rules. But even if we did, there is no right and wrong here: just our interests and their interests. It feels like cynical, mob-level leadership.
But it is an obvious gambit, too, and a winning one. This is a club that seems to feel comfortable being cast as the villain, albeit not as a classic villain. The self-image here is more antihero, more Hans Gruber in Die Hard: charming, successful, and convinced right up to the final wide-eyed reckoning that they are in fact the hero of this movie; that this is all a glorious underdog tale.
In Haaland they have the perfect instrument of vengeance, in terms of style and presence, but also in the deeper gears of his attacking movements now. Something has clicked in the past two games. As they had against Aston Villa, City geared their possession game towards that central attacking point, still keeping the ball but looking for quick vertical passes, always with an eye on those startlingly sudden forward runs.
Two minutes in, City’s chief attacking threat could be seen wading through two players out on the right touchline: moving with fearsome speed, but also nimble enough to skip left and right keeping the ball. This is Haaland’s most basic superpower, the physique of a 6ft 5in human with the scaled-up fibres of a normal sized elite athlete.
A bit later he got away from Tomiyasu and might have nicked the ball in at the back post. It is easy to be deceived by Haaland’s appearance, to see only a kind of Nordic goal-terminator. But this was cute, smart movement. He’s elusive in those spaces. Exactly how isn’t clear. But he is.
The opening goal of this game came from a moment of Haaland hustle, jumping with William Saliba and forcing a deflected header that left Tomiyasu running back towards goal. His left-footed backpass was scuffed horribly into the path of Kevin De Bruyne, who had a chance to score from that position, but not an easy one. The finish was just sublime, whipped instantly over Aaron Ramsdale, a moment of beautifully cruel precision.
Arsenal responded well, the equaliser arriving before half-time. Eddie Nketiah won the penalty. Bukayo Saka, who was excellent all night, buried it. Coming back into this game against the tide was a feat in itself for Arsenal. But here they were faced with a version of Haaland who seemed to grow through this game, helping to make City’s second for Jack Grealish, and ending the night as its dominant figure.
When City stumbled in January it was all too easy to suggest Haaland-ism was the problem. This team has spent six years playing without a fixed attacking point. It was always going to take time. Adversity, bile and theatrical victimhood seem to have helped bring some clarity in mid-season. Cleaner lines. Haaland-age City. Pep-Ball with a bludgeon as well as a quiver of arrows. This felt like something closer to an end point.
