Erling Haaland has scored 31 goals with three assists from 28 games since joining Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund last summer, but the 22-year-old was blamed by Dietmar Hamann for not fitting in the team and negatively affecting their performances this season.
The former City midfielder believes Haaland isn’t the right type of player for Pep Guardiola as he’s not composed in possession and is only good at finishing of chances in the penalty area. Hamann believes City aren’t an efficient attacking side with Haaland up front, as he’s scoring disproportionately more than his teammates.
Hamann told talkSPORT: “Now you’ve got a player who a lot of the time in their matches hardly takes part, it’s almost like playing with ten men. I don’t care how many goals he scores or how many hat-tricks he scores, you need to see how many goals the team scores.
Haaland has scored 25 goals in 20 league games, bagging an impressive four hat-tricks in his debut campaign, but all of City’s defeats have come in games he failed to score in.
They’ve averaged 1.0 point per game when Haaland doesn’t score, compared to the 2.57 points per game when he does. City have scored 53 goals after 21 games this campaign and had 53 goals from 21 games last season, so they haven’t improved – the goals are just going to less players.
Hamann added: “I think they’ve scored less goals at the same stage of last season and have got less points. I don’t think that Haaland is a player that fits into the team because he’s everything the team isn’t. I don’t think long-term he will improve City’s team and that’s their biggest problem.”
“(Haaland is) good when you play quickly – at Dortmund he scored his goals after they turned over the ball, played three or four passes and the ball was in the back of the net. With City they pass the ball 30/40 times before breaking the team down and that’s not his game.”
Haaland is 18th in the squad for passes per game (13.9) and 21st for pass completion (76.3%), so Hamann isn’t wrong to say he doesn’t quite fit the system. The Norwegian international averages more shots per game (3.7) than any City player since 2018 but it’s not led to City scoring more goals collectively.
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