Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola echoed a sentiment commonly spouted by Roy Keane when confronted with Erling Haaland’s startling goalscoring statistics. “It’s his job,” he grinned.
The unrelenting finisher scored twice in City’s 5–1 thumping of Burnley on Saturday afternoon, taking his tally for the season with club and country to a sickening 15 in nine appearances.
Haaland now boasts 93 goals in the Premier League (from just 103 appearances) ensuring he surpassed Manchester United icon Ole Gunnar Solskjær as the most prolific Norwegian in the competition’s history. The brace also saw Haaland gatecrash City’s list of 10 all-time top scorers.
The 25-year-old, who only signed for the Sky Blues three years ago, has already amassed 133 goals across all competitions for City. That is still just over half of Sergio Agüero’s record tally (260) but given the rate at which Haaland is currently plundering Premier League backlines, the gap will surely continue to shrink.
Guardiola dropped his Keane tribute act to hail Haaland as “an incredibly important figure for us.” “He always has the feeling that he can score and I’m really pleased again for the performance for the team,” the Catalan coach gushed as City made up ground on a faltering Liverpool this weekend.
“Since the [Manchester] United game, the team showed another way in their body language when they weren’t playing good against Arsenal in how they defend and helped each other—that is the key for everything,” Guardiola beamed.
