Erling Haaland made clear that Manchester City must look inward after a chaotic midweek victory that reduced the gap to Arsenal to two points. The forward, who described his own performance as \u201cnot good enough,\u201d was unimpressed by a finish made nervy when Samu Chukwueze\u2019s second running volley in the space of four minutes made it 5\u20134 with a quarter of an hour remaining.<\/p>\n
The result took City to within two points of Arsenal at the Premier League summit before the leaders host Brentford on Wednesday. Upon receiving the Player of the Match award, Haaland was asked about the wider significance for the title race. \u201cOf course, it\u2019s important,\u201d he told Sky Sports . \u201cArsenal came here and they won as well. So, we know how difficult it is to come here and Fulham is a great team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut again, we shouldn\u2019t think too much about Arsenal,\u201d Haaland warned. \u201cWe should focus on ourselves, try to improve and avoid things like this happen today, because it\u2019s not good enough and we all know this and we need to improve as a team. That\u2019s what our focus should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola struck a more upbeat tone after the near collapse. \u201cIt only happens in this league,\u201d he giddily told Match of the Day. \u201cWe played a fantastic game… Listen, there was some really positive things in what we have done. To come here, to score five goals, and the way we played in that first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end it was a question of character, resilience and defence. They did what they had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match also provided another milestone for Haaland. After shattering Alan Shearer\u2019s record in the race to a century, it was put to Haaland whether he could eventually surpass the former England captain\u2019s all-time ranking of 260 Premier League goals. \u201cI know about it,\u201d the 25-year-old shrugged, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think too much about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If his scoring run continues at close to a goal per game, it would take a little more than four further seasons to reach that mark. City have tied him to a contract that doesn\u2019t expire until 2034. For now, the former Borussia Dortmund frontman was chiefly concerned with the chances he missed against Fulham and with the collective improvements his manager and team demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland urged City to focus on themselves after a chaotic 5-4 victory that he called not good enough<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713,238,172],"tags":[1216],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fulham","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-250-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","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=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}