Erling Haaland (Manchester City)
The simplest deals are often the best deals, and too many overthought this one. What would a manager like Pep Guardiola do with a guaranteed goal machine with the cruising speed of a runaway Scania and the height of an Olympian pole vaulter? The answer, once the requisite adjustments had been made, was that Guardiola and Manchester City now had the use of a goalscoring force so powerful that early 20th-century ghosts such as Dixie Dean and George Camsell were brought back to prominence. All while journalists reached for metaphors along the lines of “wrecking ball” and “Death Star”; Haaland appears to have made City more powerful than they could possibly imagine. Pity poor Darwin Núñez, who entered the season being compared to the Norwegian, and at Liverpool had the kind of inconsistent season that might be expected of a new signing in a new country. From two goals on his league debut at West Ham onwards, there could never be doubts in Haaland.
