Erling Haaland continued his assault of the Premier League after grabbing a second successive hattrick for Manchester City in their 6-0 rout of Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night.
The big Norwegian made it two hattricks in his last two halves of football and also set an illustrious Premier League record in the process. He is now the first player in Premier League history to score nine goals after five games and many are starting to wonder just how many more records he would break and set at this point.
Haaland can’t just seem to stop scoring at the moment and playing in a team like Manchester City who create chances for fun has only helped his cause even more.
Asides Haaland’s 26-minute first half hattrick, Joao Cancelo also got on the scoresheet before Julian Alvarez came from the bench to bag a brace of his own and help City maintain their unbeaten start to the 2022/23 campaign.
Reactions after Haaland’s second hattrick
While everyone chose to talk about his goals, Pep Guardiola claimed something else motivated Haaland; winning trophies.
Speaking after his side’s emphatic win, the City boss said:
“I think what he wants is to win the titles. This is my feeling of what he wants. If the records and goals help that then good,” Guardiola declared.
“Records and goals don’t win titles, I think he wants to be part of that.
“When we bought Erling, everybody spoke about what he had done in the past.
“What we want to do is to help him continue what he has done in Norway, Austria and Germany. Hopefully he can continue to enjoy the game.
“I don’t want him to get niggles so we do substitutions otherwise he would score more goals, I am sure.”
On his own part, Haaland chose to heap praise on his City teammates and credited them for his strong start to the Premier League.
“Amazing. Nothing more to say,” he said.
“It was about keep doing what we did in the second half against Crystal Palace. Play, play, play and we knew we’d get the chances and we did that. It was nice. It’s been good so far, I’m not complaining!”
“I try to listen as much as I can to Pep [Guardiola] and the boys. They’re amazing footballers, without them I can’t score goals. It’s about finding the chemistry and to listen to Guardiola.
“It’s fantastic. That’s why I came here. We play so good, we find each other, it’s going to be nice.”
Who can stop Haaland?
At this point, the answer is nobody and only Haaland can come in Haaland’s way at this point. That statement is another way of saying only injury can stop this goal-machine in his tracks and if he can stay fit for a full season, we are looking at the likelihood of multiple goal-scoring records being shattered.
