Once again, Erling Haaland, this time with a hat-trick, pushed Manchester City to victory against Wolverhampton (3-0) by Julen Lopetegui, the man who successfully came to the rescue of his team and descended from the cloud after a game in which the team led by Pep Guardiola got the part.
If nothing goes wrong, Haaland will smash records this season. His numbers are spectacular. With the three goals he scored against Wolver, he reached 25 in 19 Premier League games this season. He has already celebrated more than the top scorers of the previous four seasons (Son Heung-min and Mohamed Salah scored 23 in 2021/22, the same as Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy in 2020/21 and 2019/20 respectively). ).
In front of him he had a rival who absolutely left City from the start. Rising from its ashes after Lopetegui’s arrival on the bench, Wolverhampton, a new team led by the Spanish coach, faced a tough challenge that they could never overcome. It seems that he is not yet mature enough to test himself against such powerful rivals. The possibility of a surprise should never be ruled out, but City never lent itself to it.
Haaland’s performance will not detract from Lopetegui, who took Wolves out of UVI in just four games. He came within five points of rescue and after adding seven points out of a possible twelve managed to lift him out of relegation. Now, despite the defeat to City, he will stay out of dangerous places.
At the front he had Guardiola, who won the game from the first moment. With more wardrobe than Lopetegui, Guardiola can afford to bench names like Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo, Julián Álvarez or Nathan Ake. Against Wolves he put Kevin De Bruyne back in his team and used Aymeric Laporte as left back. Everything worked on wheels.
It didn’t take City long to bottle up Wolves, locked into their plot off the pitch since referee David Coote whistled the start of the game. Throughout the first part, he accumulated one warning after another due to his rival’s inability to generate anything.
The central Nathan Collins raised his figure to postpone the tragedy. For 40 minutes it was an impregnable wall for City, which repeatedly came up against the fierceness and quality of the Irish giant (1.93). However, I couldn’t escape a merry-go-round of chances that Haaland launched after 18 minutes with a shot that José Sá saved.
Haaland’s report was followed by Ilkai Gündogan’s (header over goal) and Rodri Hernández’s (a long shot that narrowly missed) giving way to the Norwegian player’s first goal, who opened the can with a header that benefited from the tenth assist. of the De Bruyne course.
Lopetegui, determined to change the course of events, made a triple substitution. Matheus Cunha, Joao Moutinho and Pablo Sarabia, who made his debut after his departure from PSG, appeared at the restart. Hwang Hee-chan, Raúl Jiménez and Adama Traoré left the field, but nothing changed.
City continued to pass the role and in just ten minutes Haaland ended every Wolves comeback attempt. First he hit a penalty committed by Rúben Neves on Gündogan; and later took advantage of a mistake by Sá to sign another treble, the fourth in an official game since signing for Guardiola’s team.
His two goals failed to bring down his teammates’ revolutions. Replaced by Julián Álvarez and cheered on by the Etihad fans, without Haaland, Guardiola’s men carried on with the show. They failed to increase the income, but they certified a victory that put them two points behind Arsenal (they have two games less) thanks to Haaland’s insatiable gluttony.
Source: El heraldo
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
