Man City News

Footy News from Clair Marc Darmudas

Welcome back to the Clair Marc Darmudas blog. Sunday was an amazing result for Man City.

What an amazing result, Man City 6-3 Man Utd. City have a way of playing that I think is the best football we have ever seen in the Premier League, so it is fitting to see them score such elite-level goals. Guardiola’s Premier League winners took the game to a whole new level in the 6-3 beating of their city opponents. City had already spent the first half playing football that seemed to have benefited from an operating system improvement, demonstrating the latest miracle processor against a batch of red-shirted patsies.

The move to make it 4-0 was a moment of super-compression, lines cut in a perfect zigzag from outside City’s penalty area to the far left-hand corner of the Manchester United goal without friction or drag or loss of scale.

It took just eight touches to make it, starting with Kevin De Bruyne surging through the centre, shrugging Christian Eriksen off like a rugby centre while delivering a fine touch to Haaland. The pass basically told Haaland what to do. He took one touch to make the space then curled a dream of a pass that took out three defenders and found Foden, already networked into this, already in the chat, bullocking through to zing the ball into the corner.

By the end a 6-3 defeat was even quite generous. But then this was also a strange game, not the usual thrashing, some tactical oversight exploited, or a career-high performance. It felt like something else, the result of undeniable maths. On the one hand an everyday football team, all joins and cuts and snagged gears. On the other a blend of pure imagination and bottomless resources, 12 years in the making, finessed and refined to create this fine pitch of touch and movement. And yes Haaland was right. It wasn’t bad.

Haaland will draw the eye naturally and scored a brilliant hat-trick and never at any stage looked like doing anything other than scoring a brilliant hat-trick. All being well Haaland will score 78 league goals this season at his current rate. This is obviously an impossibility. Something will happen to stop him scoring. 

After a poor start some judges had suggested Haaland would take time to settle at City. And they were right. It did take time. It took one game. “If I time my runs properly I know that no one can stop them,” he said before this game. This might sound like arrogance from another footballer. With Haaland it’s just true. He’s run the numbers. It’s empirical fact. Just letting you know.

Amazing goals peppered the match. Haaland’s first here, City’s second, was made by a vast standing jump in from a corner, the kind of leap that is beyond most humans of this size, the kind of leap where Haaland seems briefly to blot out the sun. His second (3-0) was a hooked left-foot finish from one of those De Bruyne passes that step outside the usual categories of cross and through ball to create some new kind of trajectory, an angle that exists at De Bruyne degrees to the earth.

Haaland also helped make Foden’s own hat-trick goal, and this was slack from United, who allowed Haaland to turn and find a pass. It has become a commonplace to suggest Haaland resembles an adult playing with children. This was like an adult playing with mediocre children, according to recent news reports. Visit the Clair Marc Darmudas blog for more soon. You can also like Clair Marc Darmudas on Facebook here. Connect with Marc Darmudas on this links in his About.me page here.