Pep Guardiola declared Erling Haaland to be operating at the level of peak Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo after the Manchester City striker scored his 17th goal of the season in 13 appearances.<\/p>\n
Haaland has 13 Premier League goals, the last two coming in Sunday\u2019s 3\u20131 win over Bournemouth, already more than half of his final tally of 22 from last season with 28 league matches still to play. City\u2019s next top scorer in the Premier League this term is unexpectedly Maxime Est\u00e8ve, who plays for Burnley and was responsible for two own goals when the teams met in September. No other City player has scored more than once in the league; Phil Foden, Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders, Matheus Nunes and Nico O\u2019Reilly all have one goal each.<\/p>\n
That concentration of goals has invited questions about reliance on Haaland, but Guardiola pushed back after the Bournemouth game. \u201cThe last game we played without him against Swansea and scored three goals,\u201d he said, referring to last week\u2019s Carabao Cup victory when the Norwegian was left out due to a minor fitness concern; he possibly would have been rested anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like when you play with Messi or Ronaldo, their influence is so big,\u201d Guardiola added. \u201cOf course, we need the goals from Phil, Tijjani and the other ones who had the chances. You see the numbers of [Haaland]? Of course he\u2019s that level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference is Messi and Ronaldo have done it for 15 years, but this is the level. The first goal [against Bournemouth], the way he shoots the ball, it\u2019s like \u2018I am going to score.\u2019 He has that hunger. It\u2019s top. I\u2019ve said many times how incredibly coachable and manageable he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am tough sometimes with him, but he is open-minded. He lives for the goals and sometimes the pressure cannot sustain 90 minutes, but that\u2019s normal. Without him it would be tough to be honest, but we are lucky that Omar [Marmoush] is back, and we have fit players, it\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haaland already holds the Premier League single-season record of 36 goals from 2022\u201323. At his current 2025\u201326 rate he could exceed 40 league goals; with an average of 1.3 goals per game through 10 appearances, projections in the draft suggested he could approach 50. Historically, only nine players have reached 40 or more league goals in a season, and Dixie Dean\u2019s 60 in 1927\u201328 remains the all-time mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola says Haaland is playing at Messi and Ronaldo level after scoring his 17th in 13 games. EPL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[739,238,1125],"tags":[1162,452,1224],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bournemouth","category-manchester-city","category-strikers","tag-analytics","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","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=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}