Erling Haaland offered a revealing, if brief, answer when asked about Manchester United, and it said almost everything about where the rivalry sits from his point of view.<\/p>\n
Pressed on the subject, the Manchester City forward paused, laughed and admitted: \u201cI had to think about the name.\u201d It was a sharp reminder that, for him, United are not the reference point they once were in the city. During his four years at City, the main challengers have been Arsenal and Liverpool, not the club once regarded as the dominant force in Manchester.<\/p>\n
The timing of the comment mattered. Haaland had already been looking ahead to City\u2019s trip to Anfield on Sunday, and he made no attempt to soften the mood around the fixture. The Premier League\u2019s most productive striker welcomed the expectation of a difficult reception and said he wanted it that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it\u2019s like that [hostile],\u201d Haaland insisted, \u201cit should be like that when Man City go to Liverpool and Anfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
There has been plenty of talk about the atmosphere awaiting City, especially after the official announcement of the club\u2019s guilt regarding more than 100 breaches of financial regulations. That backdrop has fuelled predictions that the home crowd will be relentlessly hostile.<\/p>\n
Yet the picture is not quite so straightforward. Anfield retains a fearsome reputation on European nights, but the edge around the ground has not always been so intense in more ordinary circumstances. On a Sunday afternoon, the noise can only do so much.<\/p>\n
The match itself may prove more decisive than the setting. City go into the game top of the league with a perfect record under Enzo Maresca, while Liverpool have already dropped points against Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest and Fulham, all three of whom began the day in the bottom half.<\/p>\n
Against that backdrop, Haaland\u2019s belief that City supporters are \u201cgoing to have a good time\u201d at Anfield does not look entirely misplaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland brushed off United, then backed City to cope with the pressure at Anfield on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,1056,172],"tags":[1836,180],"class_list":["post-21729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-man-city","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}