Not just a goal machine: the new Haaland model can provide an early boost to Arsenal | Erling Haaland

“Everyone was a machine.” But you know, in the right direction. With Pep Guardiola, it will always be designed as a positive thing, the sign of a team that begins to sparkle.

These are benevolent machines: not so much joy -free football, more perfectly functioning the mounting chain of Jam Factory, locking units, perfect concert systems. A chess computer playing Padel against a chess computer, driven by 25 even more powerful chess computers. A conversation on the architecture of Bauhaus in a restaurant in food science in New York where dessert is a cube of flambé fiberglass at your table by a hologram.

Something like that anyway. It is acceptable to get carried away a little, a little purple prose at the spectacle of a high -level Guardiola team. If only because Guardiola himself is such a paradox.

Here, we have the ultimate control coach, whose ideal football game is the midfielder to a million people plus an infinite possession, but which is simultaneously seized by an almost comical degree of non -filtered passion, jumping on the contact line, sculpting wild human forms in the air with his hands of cold metal robot.

Be that as it may, excellence in the machine was clearly a theme of the post-match cat in a very happy Manchester City cloakroom after a beautiful 3-0 fluid victory against a non-fluid and non-fluid Manchester.

Guardiola’s eyes confused with pleasure while he was talking about the abuse of his players. “Erling is a machine,” was the verdict of Jérémy Doku after Erling Haaland scored two beautiful goals and between the two spent a large part of the game on the different parts of the Maussade human flesh acting as a United Defense.

Although, no doubt, the parts that stood out the most were when Haaland was no less machine, and in a way that can repeat: it was against obsolete software, the crash of the AMORIM era – indicates a change in the city’s attack models.

The usual qualities of the Haaland elite were there. The eye of the elite shooter. Miss-One-Score-Deux intrepidity. The supernatural height / speed agility ratio, a physical gift, but which also requires a constant maintenance, 25 years old, and is perhaps a little taken for acquired during its fourth season in City.

It is easy to survive the nature of the Haaland style. He remains an unusual elite footballer, although the one who is a goalkeeper Viking viking with the first touch of a carpet in League two; Or the complete center-center each time he manages to finish a ball through.

But there was also a slight feeling of discharge of patterns for the way Haaland led City’s attacks, and a disturbing note for Arsenal before the inevitably massive meeting on Sunday at the Emirates. Liverpool plays on Saturday against Everton against Everton. Their record in this Reads assembly played 12 and lost one with a global score of 24-7 in the last decade.

As Monday takes place, the defeat by City At Home could leave Arsenal six points behind the champions before smokers at the start of the season have been dismissed. You cannot win the title in September. But you can do a lot to prevent Arsenal from winning it.

And for Haaland in particular, the possibility of inflicting a shot from the early body of the lung can represent an interesting side project. Is it personal with Arsenal now? Surely not. Football moves too quickly, players are constantly seen. There is not really time for real grievances of the old school to get worse. But it is also easy to forget that the last meeting of these teams in February was a strange opportunity, an arsenal result of a declaration style which ended up signifying very little, and also, in its perspective, something of a resentment game.

A victory for Arsenal 5-1 could have seemed a corner which turned into account its poor League record against City through the entire Mega-Méga de Guardiola. Five arsenal players scored that day, including two teenagers. But what could have been an ignition note has become a moment of vertigo. Arsenal came out of the Carabao Cup three days later. The next home game was the West Ham 1-0 defeat that killed the League season. After the city’s match, they lost 18 points in their next 12 games and were 10 in the top at the end.

Scroll backwards and the key snare that day was Myles Lewis-Skelly making the Haaland yogic celebration after marked, a follow-up of “Who are you?” Interaction between the two in the previous game at Etihad. All this is well, fun, normal. Lewis-Skelly is a very good and confident young player. Haaland probably found it funny. All human life is joking now.

However, in the end, arsenal fans definitely made a sarcastic poznan, with a vague feeling of disbelief suspended around the ground. Yes, you are nine points ahead of your closest recent rivals. But it was actually the chance to win the league for the city’s deposit season. And Haaland now has the opportunity to open another chapter in a game that really counts for something, going in which it is also in rare form of form.

His current goals’ race is the modern football madness: 18 in his last 14 games from May to September, has scored through four competitions against eight countries. We can probably say it now. This guy, well, this guy knows how to do that.

Haaland also played a little differently, at least at certain times and against good opponents. In the Manchester derby, he had 31 keys, five of which were shots, six clears. Its control has just improved, its passage faster and more similar to the city.

It should happen. He is trained by Guardiola every week. But there is also a feeling that the form of the team and the available spaces have moved a bit. Two things were apparent on Sunday. The first Haaland dropped deeper, connecting the transitions well. At the end of the second half, he took the ball in the central circle, pulled in space and pushed a perfect pass to put Tijjani Reijnders to the goal, in Bruyne style.

And secondly, he was able to run to the central defenders, using his speed goal as a weapon as in his Dortmund years of Borussia. Even its first opening within range made it flee a slightly interested Luke Shaw, before producing a super-delicate finish. His second involved having fun like a wild Mustang halfway. And yes, Harry Maguire’s help out over 40 meters can be the equivalent of elite football to defeat a pot in a pot in a naked fist, but the finish also had a good air of inevitability.

Haaland is just very, very good in this area, in a way that was sometimes lost during the attack by the city. He helps have the right opponents. The central defenders of United have intensified several times to fill the holes left by a central pivot out of the company, leaving the gaps to sprint, another example of the ease of planning against a manager who tells you exactly what he is going to do each time.

Haaland could be in its familiar form against Arsenal, who has excellent central mobile defenders and a block of fatty midfielders. But he also produced exceptional global matches against the same opponents, especially during the 3-1 victory in February 2023.

And on days like these, it can really look, not only as a real central advantage, but as the best central advantage in Europe. For Arsenal, he presents a very motivated danger note in a game that already looks like an eliminator for the right to hunt Liverpool in the fall.