Notts County’s Macaulay Langstaff is currently League Two’s top scorer, but last season the 27-year-old from Stockton was hailed as “the Erling Haaland of non-league” due to the utter stupidity of his numbers.
Langstaff said he was excited about that comparison at the time, as anyone would be.
I’m not so sure Haaland shares his delight at hearing how Roy Keane compared him in some ways to Langstaff, saying the Manchester City striker’s all-round performance against Arsenal was like that of a “League Two player”.
It was a lazy phrase from Keane after City’s first 0-0 draw in 76 Premier League games. An unfair one, because Haaland’s overall game was not the problem in that monotonous draw.
Mohamed Salah took 12 shots against Brighton on Sunday, his most in a Premier League match in his 254th appearance, as Liverpool created chance after chance for him to try and score.
Erling Haaland (right) struggled coming into the game against Arsenal, only taking two shots and less than 30 touches.
Roy Keane (left) criticized the striker’s overall play after the match and claimed he was of the standard of a League Two footballer.
Notts County’s Macaulay Langstaff is League Two’s top scorer with 24 goals in 40 appearances
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That was not the case for Haaland against Arsenal. Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba were aggressive every time one of them followed him, showing why they are at the heart of the Premier League’s toughest defence, but Mikel Arteta’s team also lost man-to-man possession all over the pitch. .
They suffocated City so they couldn’t create the chances they usually create and that was Pep Guardiola’s biggest problem. The responsibility of keeping Haaland falls on the City players.
Not the other way around, despite Keane’s criticism of his overall contribution to Sunday’s stalemate.
City have failed to score at home or away against Arsenal in the Premier League this season. When facing opponents who defend as determinedly as their title rivals, it is only natural that Haaland would be criticized for not doing something different to change the game.
But Guardiola didn’t bring the 23-year-old Norwegian to the club to do what Harry Kane was doing with Tottenham: drop deep to selflessly groom Heung-min Son.
He has Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and everyone else for that. Furthermore, the midfield is already quite busy, with John Stones an expert at moving up from central defense to act as that extra man.
If City wanted their star striker to have that skill set, they would have shelled out the money for Kane. Instead, they got the best finisher of the game in Haaland.
They signed him to stay high, to occupy the rival centre-backs, to put the ball in the back of the net. He did it last season, with 36 goals in 35 Premier League games.
He has done it this season, with 18 of 24, and he will be the first to confess that he wasted the only opportunity that came his way at the Etihad Stadium when he accidentally made a Nutmegg after a corner.
Whether critics believe Haaland should do more than patrol the penalty area is a good debate after another game against Arsenal in which he failed to get a shot on goal.
But I think it’s wrong to criticize Haaland for not trying to make him a creator on a team that is full of them. The most appropriate discussion would be about his form in front of goal. Since returning from injury in January, Haaland has scored four goals in eight Premier League starts.
Haaland raced to the Premier League Golden Boot last season with a record 36 goals, and could yet repeat the feat this season.
The Norwegian was aggressively removed from the game by a combination of Arsenal centre-backs Gabriel (pictured) and William Saliba.
City manager Pep Guardiola has shaped his system to maximize Haaland’s unrivaled finishing ability.
For a regular striker, it would be a respectable return. For Haaland, he is nowhere near the standards he has set for himself as City’s chief enforcer. Could he improve in his tethering game? Sure, he could be cleaner.
But Haaland is not the worst in the world when he dabbles in that department. Certainly his level is not that of League Two. He can hold the ball better than most and it’s not that he can’t make a pass or that he spins slower than milk.
He was much more involved in the preparation of Borussia Dortmund, but they did not have the cast of creators that currently surround him at City.
It was not for Haaland’s lack of creativity that City failed to take charge of the Premier League title race on Sunday. It was because Arsenal made sure it wasn’t created.