‘Erling Haaland picked the wrong club,’ claims Premier League legend

Robin Bairner

• 6 Feb 2023 07:37 GMT
• 3 min read

Manchester City striker Erling Haaland may have scored 31 times already this season, but he is only showing a fraction of his true capabilities, according to Jamie Carragher, who says that his full potential is not being exploited by the Premier League champions.

Haaland was chased by a myriad of clubs last summer, when a release fee from Borussia Dortmund came into effect.

The 22-year-old ultimately chose City, but things have not gone entirely according to plan, despite netting well over a goal per game.

Although Haaland has impressed with the scoring figures he has chalked up, the performance of the team as a whole has notably dipped. The latest evidence of this was a 1-0 loss to Tottenham on Sunday that meant they failed to close the gap to Arsenal at the top of the Premier League table, leaving them five points off the pace.

Erling Haaland at Man City: Goals, assists, results & fixtures in 2022/23

What did Carragher say about Haaland?

Carragher believes that Haaland made the wrong call last year by going to Pep Guardiola’s side.

“He may have actually picked the wrong club to actually get the best out of him,” he told Sky Sports. “Manchester City, as a team, have scored the same amount of goals.

“He's scored 25 Premier League goals, but Manchester City as a team have scored the same amount of goals and they've conceded more and it's far easier to counter-attack them as well.

“So they're a different team and a lesser team with Erling Haaland in the team and it's not his fault.

“Manchester City as a team will not play end to end football, it's not Pep Guardiola's way.

“Erling Haaland has still scored 25 Premier League goals, but we're not seeing the full package of what this player can do because of the team that he's gone to.

“I'm not criticising him and I think he's that he's so good he's still scored 25 goals, but we've probably only seen 60 or 70 per cent of him.

“We're not seeing that power and that blistering pace, but we've got to come back to the fact that no matter how many goals he's scored as an individual, Manchester City have scored exactly the same number of goals.”

Haaland has an Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) of €139 million, behind only PSG's Kylian Mbappe.