PPerhaps this is precisely what happens when a team gets into the habit of winning: it keeps winning. They don't have to dominate, they don't have to create dozens of chances, they don't have to maintain possession for hours at a time. They simply have to be and, by the quality of their being, they find goals when they need them.
Manchester City is not Real Madrid, not entirely. They are still unable to fall asleep after kick-off and watch idly as the opposition squanders a handful of opportunities before yawning and taking advantage of the first opportunity that presents itself. But they are still unbeaten in 32 games since the defeat against Aston Villa in December and are nowhere near the exceptional standards they set last season. Having exceptional players capable of changing games in a moment really helps.
One of them, Phil Foden, was named Football Writers' Player of the Year this week, reward for a season that has seen him reach new levels of maturity and influence. He is still only 23, but the days when it was feared that Pep Guardiola was holding him back by not fully trusting him appear to be long gone. Even his cheeky, mischievous performance against Atlético last season, his cleverness with a smile, seems like another era. Foden is a senior player these days and plays with the responsibility that comes with that status.
Another, Erling Haaland, FWA player of the year last season, has been in a bad mood, at least by his own absurdly high standards, since returning from a foot injury in late January, scoring four goals in his first nine league games. . The question of his lack of participation in the general game arose again. And it is still problematic to have a player who participates so little if he does not also score goals.
But, just when the confrontation has reached its critical point, Haaland scores again. He had the fewest touches of any City outfielder again on Saturday, but no one worried about that because four of them led to goals. There are already seven in his last four starts, one of which was from the bench. His form has returned and that is very ominous for the title race.
The fourth goal in particular showed his confidence; He is once again reaching the levels he reached last season when he began to threaten the records set by Dixie Dean and George Camsell. His touch after receiving Foden's pass wasn't great, but it didn't matter; He pushed Max Kilman aside and shot José Sá with the ease of an adult in the schoolyard. This was the Haaland of old, a creature built on a scale different from that of most humans, who looked all the world like he had been sewn together from discarded parts of past legends and then brought to life in a tower atop. midnight.
It is true that two of his goals were from penalties, the first quite soft. But the second of them, the hat-trick, was caused by an attack by Haaland through the middle, Nélson Semedo's clumsy lunge on his supporting leg born of desperation. His second goal, however, was perhaps more significant: Rodri's cross floated past the far post, where Haaland rose above Semedo and guided a majestic header across goal and towards the far post. It was the goal of a former English number 9, a Tommy Lawton, a Nat Lofthouse, an Andy Carroll, not someone who had not scored with a header since the Manchester derby in October.
The strange thing, though, is that when Haaland scored that header, City weren't playing particularly well. They were giving the ball away a lot and there was a feeling that Wolves, spurred into action by the early penalty against them, might regain possession. It wasn't like last week at the City Ground, when Nottingham Forest were clearly on top before Haaland came off the bench to secure the game with a second goal, but City weren't entirely comfortable. It happened again when Hwang Hee-chan scored for City. They weren't exactly nervous, but the game didn't seem over at that moment: a minute later, it did.
The upcoming games at Fulham and Tottenham always looked tougher for City as they closed in on a fourth successive title, but this, in the end, was an emphatic dismissal of a team that had beaten them earlier in the season. A towering header, two penalties, one won with a quick run, a brutal fourth… it's safe to say Haaland is back. And when he is in that kind of form, the team behind him doesn't have to play with the deft cohesion of which he is capable. Regardless, they are dragged into excellence.
