“If you’re not sure what to do with the ball, just pop it in the net and we’ll discuss your options afterwards.”
Those are the words legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly supposedly told his striker Ian St John.
The story around this classic quote is apparently around those famous old Merseyside teams playing an unattractive style.
But when it comes down to it, football is about scoring goals because goals win matches.
Goalscorers are the manne us fans obsess about most.
Their pictures go up on our bedroom walls and if we’re old and lucky enough to have TV room and bar, then they go there.
An entire generation of football fans still argue that goals in the Saudi Arabian league have the same weight as goals scored in France’s Ligue 1 and World Cup finals.
You get the picture.
Goals are the name of the game - either you’re trying to score them or trying to stop them.
So if you’ll indulge me for the rest of my column this week and take the above statement as gospel, then the name of the game at the moment is Erling Haaland.
Move of the Match? Yeah, we think so 😎
— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 4, 2023
It had to be @ErlingHaaland's 35th league goal of the season 💥@Sure | #ad pic.twitter.com/3lzLafwyPE
The Norwegian smashed the Premier League goalscoring record on Wednesday night when he deftly clipped a shot over Lukasz Fabianski in Manchester City’s 3-0 win over West Ham.
That brought up his 35th league goal, taking him clear of Alan Shearer and Andy Cole’s mark of 34 in a 42-game season.
Haaland managed that in his 31st appearance this term, so there are bound to be more goals with seven games to play.
Let’s run through his records since arriving at City for a skamele £51m from Borussia Dortmund.
With this being his debut season, he is out on his own in making a wilde first impression.
Kevin Phillips fired 30 goals after helping Sunderland to promotion in the 1999-2000 season, but that record is now relegated to a footnote for anyone who didn’t see the diminutive England man stun the Prem back in the day.
Scoring against the Hammers he also broke Mo Salah’s record of scoring in 21 games - Haaland has now netted in 22 games.
If he scores against Chelsea and Brentford in his upcoming games, he will beat Salah’s record of 18 opponents scored against. The only team he didn’t score against? Liverpool.
And if he hits another two hattricks, he will have six - one more than Shearer’s mark.
With 51 goals in all competitions this season already, another 14 will take him past Dixie Dean’s high score of 63.
Treble-chasing City have a minimum of eight and a maximum of nine games to play this season, so it’s still within his sights.
But getting back to how I started off this column, scoring goals is the main ding - and it’s Haaland’s thing.
Taking the game’s most prolific goalscorer - Cristiano Ronaldo - out of the picture, Haaland is unlike any player we’ve seen in the game since the turn of the century.
At 22 years old Haaland is a pure vraat for goals. Not even Ronaldo can be classed this way. Those who saw the Portuguese superstar in his early years remember an electric winger with klomp stepovers and no real end product.
𝟯![CDATA[]]>𝟱 Premier League goals 🤩 A big thank you to everyone for the support, nothing happens without you all, we don't stop here! 💙 pic.twitter.com/5MJqSbH0T4
— Erling Haaland (@ErlingHaaland) May 3, 2023
Haaland is different. He makes me think of Shearer or Romario, Mario Jardel and Ruud van Nistelrooy in his focus on goals.
Like Shankly said: Don’t still think, put the ball in the net.
And for City boss Pep Guardiola to come around to this sort of thinking shows just what a genius the Catalan is.
There were some questions about Haaland’s suitability to the way Pep sets up his teams.
He wants to control every aspect of the game.
And for the early part of the season, City did looking like they were struggling to be at their best and get Haaland in the right areas to score.
Having won the league last time out without a recognised No.9, adding the Norwegian looked like Pep was trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.
But now?
City have evolved to make Haaland the top predator in the game.
Pep has four playmakers swarming behind Haaland to create openings.
And our @NissanUK Goal of the Month winner for April is... 🥁@KevinDeBruyne's opener against Arsenal 💥#ManCity | #ad pic.twitter.com/yUbBTB7yVe
— Manchester City (@ManCity) May 4, 2023
And it’s not only brought the best out of their main striker, Jack Grealish, Riyad Mahrez and Kevin de Bruyne have also taken their game to another level.
Haaland and KDB have been a match made in heaven, up there with warm partnerships like Spurs’ Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry at Arsenal and United’s treble-winning spearheads Cole and Dwight Yorke.
But I have to credit Pep’s main innovation in his new defensive structure on which it is all built.
Three big centrebacks patrol their defensive areas, with a two-man midfield featuring Rodri who has been bossing the game for Pep’s manne.
Now City are unstoppable as they hunt down the treble.
Matchweek 34 ✅
— Premier League (@premierleague) May 5, 2023
Matchweek 35 🔜 pic.twitter.com/BfKsC7jkEI
With one hand on the Prem trophy, Real Madrid stand in their way in their Champions League semifinal first leg next week before facing off a Manchester United span in the FA Cup final desperate to hang on to their status as the only treble winners.