THE RUMBLINGS are all too apparent.
Erling Haaland is back in Godzilla form roaring and stomping his way across the land; defenders emasculated, skyscrapers shaking in his wake.
The 6ft 4in Norse God of goalscoring has netted 24 times in 14 games for Manchester City and Norway this season, locating the onion bag in each of his last dozen matches.
Haaland is scoring at least twice as many goals as any other Premier League player. He is twice as big, twice as fast as most and several times more fearsome.
On his new YouTube channel, he has been showing off his home life basking in front of red light for extra Vitamin D, scoffing fatty red meat and honey as well as quaffing raw milk.
The message is clear… pasteurisation is for wimps. This man will lie directly under an udder to get his morning pinta.
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Here is a honey monster. A goal monster. Be terrified. Especially so if you are Arsenal.
Mikel Arteta may have assembled the best and deepest squad in the Premier League but he doesn’t have a Haaland.
His own Scandinavian centre-forward, Viktor Gyokores, is at least a proper striker but he isn’t a rapacious goal behemoth like the big blond fella.
And for as long as football matches are settled by the number of goals scored, the fact Haaland scores absolutely shedloads of them will have a serious impact on the title race.
After Arsenal’s excellent transfer-market summer, followed by early back-to-back defeats for City and then Liverpool’s three straight league losses, the narrative is that this must, finally, be Arsenal’s year.
Not so long as Haaland stays fit and City continue to play directly to his strengths and so long as they do not get struck by a points deduction for the 130 breaches of Premier League financial rules they strenuously deny and which remain gathering cobwebs.
It is strange to refer to Haaland’s start to the season as a return to form given that he scored 22 Premier League goals last term and 27 the year before.
But this is a return to his 2022-23 form. A Premier League record of 36 goals at better than one per game.
The sort of numbers the English top flight hadn’t seen for over half a century. Jimmy Greaves form. Dixie Dean form.
This is part of an impressive regeneration of City by Pep Guardiola, which some of us doubted he was capable of, so late in his Etihad reign.
Not because Guardiola isn’t a genius, he is. But because the City boss has compromised his principles as never before.
The high priest of possession football was never totally obsessed with keeping the ball for the sake of it and he enjoys making tongue-in-cheek references about his reputation for doing exactly that.
Donnarumma’s big impact
Yet the introduction of Gianluigi Donnarumma – in place of Ederson – was always going to have a major impact on City’s style of play.
Ederson was the ultimate sweeper-keeper, a better passer of the ball than most Premier League midfielders and the anchorman for Pep’s purist playbook.
Donnarumma is a brilliant old-school shot-stopper and, like Haaland, an absolute beast of a man at 6ft 5in.
The Italian’s signing was intriguing because of what it represented to City’s overall approach.
Likewise, the arrival of Pep Lijnders, Jurgen Klopp’s former Liverpool right-hand man, as Guardiola’s new assistant.
An injection of fresh ideas – not out of the old Barcelona school – have clearly had an impact.
Guardiola ‘possesses a monster’
The Dutchman is a yappy attack dog, an irritant to opposition benches but an inveterate enthusiast who peps up the day-to-day life of players.
All in all, it has been an exciting, slightly under-the-radar, shake-up at a club which went from world domination into an unprecedented mid-season meltdown last year and now looks ready to compete for the title again.
City head to Aston Villa today after seven victories in a nine-match unbeaten run in all competitions, their only dropped Premier League points coming at Arsenal to an injury-time equaliser.
Guardiola parked the bus after an early Haaland strike that day and almost escaped with three points.
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He has proved himself more open-minded and flexible than most had considered possible.
And in Haaland, he possesses a monster. Reared on red light and red meat and raw milk and an insatiable appetite for football’s only meaningful currency goals.
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