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Erling Haaland is often a man apart. Perhaps it is the freakish goalscoring feats, perhaps the immediately identifiable look of the giant, long-haired blond. The Norwegian’s assessment of a Manchester City season few predicted may jar with those outsiders who had tired of their dominance.
“It is not nice to lose so many games,” Haaland told BBC Sport. “It is boring and not fun.” Others found the repetitive element came in City winning, in an unprecedented quartet of consecutive league titles, in four seasons when they racked up 187 victories in all competitions.
Those who suffered amid City’s superiority, therefore, may have found much to enjoy in their demise, in 15 defeats, in five of them in succession, in eight in 12 games. Even in a 0-0 draw with a Southampton side who had been marooned on 11 points.
Haaland is accustomed to better. A man who takes the direct route to goal can be similarly cutting in his comments.
“The club has set the standards so the bar is so high that this season is a catastrophic season,” he said. Catastrophic, it seems, was not Haaland’s only verdict on a year which, if City win one of their remaining two league games, should bring Champions League qualification and which, should they prevail against Crystal Palace at Wembley on Saturday, will also provide silverware.
“We have the FA Cup final to play for and in a horrific season we still managed to do this,” said Haaland.
It was a scathing analysis from a man who did not use the mitigating factors to justify underachievement. “You can find excuses,” Haaland added. “Injuries, many injuries at bad times, but in the end we haven't been performing well enough. We haven't had fully the hunger inside of us.”
In different ways, City’s bodies and minds have failed them. Haaland is among a host of players who have been sidelined, sitting out six weeks before returning for the stalemate at Southampton. Rodri is the most notable absentee. Kevin De Bruyne went 10 weeks without starting in autumn. City’s contingent of centre-backs has been depleted.
Haaland felt that dip in desire was natural – “I think so, you cannot win every year,” he said – but it was a telling admission. If City had worn their rivals down with their relentless winning, perhaps they drained themselves mentally in the process. And, Haaland felt, exhausted themselves physically.
He is only 24, but it felt a year too far for many of his teammates, the season when they looked too old. City started to be overpowered. Call it a lack of desire or energy, but Haaland felt there is no substitute for running.
“Sometimes you just need to run,” he added. “You have to run more. We haven't run enough this season. You have to run more, you have to perform better, you have to be more stable as a team. You have to be more, find the spirit to don't let in the goal, to score the last goal, which City has been the best at in the last probably 10 years ever since Pep [Guardiola] came.”
Scoring goals has been his specialist subject. He has 30 this season, despite playing in a struggling side, despite missing seven games with an ankle injury. Guardiola disagreed the last time Haaland blamed himself but he continues to take responsibility.
“I haven't been good enough,” he insisted. “I haven't helped the team enough. In the end, we haven't been good enough. Winning games in a row. That's what we have to do.”
City were noted for their consistency, for their ability to go on extraordinary winning runs; not this year, when their longest sequence of successes was five, when those 15 defeats show a frailty, when the eight games they have failed to score demonstrate an occasional bluntness, when they are 18 points behind Liverpool.
For Haaland, winning the FA Cup would at least give City something to show for their season. “It would help, definitely,” he added; that the final is on 17 May – Constitution Day, a national holiday in his native Norway – would provide an added reason to celebrate. He has a further incentive, in the departing De Bruyne, the supplier of many of his 120 City goals. “Also for Kevin to lift the trophy one last time in his last season for City,” he said.
When De Bruyne goes, Haaland will have nine years left on the mammoth contract he signed in January. More than almost anyone else, he has a vested interest in ensuring this year is a one-off, that every campaign until 2034 is not horrific or catastrophic, that those complaining City are boring are lamenting their capacity to win again and again. He vowed: “Next season we have to find something inside our stomach again to attack the season.”
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