Pep Guardiola has challenged Manchester City to look for Erling Haaland more, as he offered an explanation for why the Blues kept declining opportunities to play the ball forward for their striker at RB Leipzig.
Haaland has been quiet in the last two games - at Nottingham Forest and Leipzig - and has missed good openings when they have presented themselves in City's two away draws. However, while his two-game goal drought has attracted criticism from outside the club, Guardiola insisted he doesn't need metrics or analysis of Haaland's limited touches to judge how his striker has performed.
Taking any blame away from Haaland, Guardiola said City need to improve their service for their No.9 rather than ask him to get more involved in their play.
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"It's our fault. Not Erling, Erling has been impressive all season. It's not metrics, I don't need metrics," Guardiola said.
"When I finish the game, one second later I know if he was involved or not and who should be involved more or not. I don't need numbers or metrics, I know exactly. It depends on us, not on him. He moves well we need to take a look at him a little bit more."
Haaland appeared frustrated as players opted against playing more directly to him at Leipzig, but Guardiola said that was down to City's game plan rather than any fault of Haaland.
"In the last game, you are right [he didn't touch the ball enough] but against Nottingham, no, Arsenal, no," the manager said.
"Don't make the one game like a theory. Because he had the chances at Nottingham in the first and the second half. But of course, we have to and will improve. We talked about that many times and it's going to happen. Striker is the most difficult position in the world because they have two players just focus on him and now for Erling, they have an extra more. So it's not easy to do that.
"In my period here the strikers that we had like Sergio [Aguero], Gabriel [Jesus], when we play a proper striker or false-9 or a different way, how many balls do they touch? So I don't know, I don't have the statistics but always our [play] is not have the ball striker, have the ball striker, have the ball striker.
"It happened against Arsenal because Arsenal go man-to-man, you should play more long balls. So our process is more and the final action is there. But even with that we have to all the time, one eye where is he, where is he. Lately, in the last game I would agree with you we didn't, I said more control, more passes than usual.
"I don't want to let them win. Really intense in the first half, in the second we dropped a little bit we were not correct in the first step in the high pressing and that's why we struggled a little bit. [We] defend more deeper and the quality they have, Leipzig always you suffer. But you're right, in that game we should have looked for him more but in the previous ones I don't have that feeling.
"Of course it's fine [if he's frustrated], I am frustrated too, you are frustrated too in your life sometimes, isn't it? It happens. Happiness is overestimated!"
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