City Watch: Another hat-trick for Haaland

Another season and another perfect start continues for Manchester City in the Premier League as over the weekend, the Blues travlled to East London to face West Ham.

The Hammers have a new manager this campaign in Julen Lopetegui, with a busy transfer window to support the new boss.

There’s quite a bit to discuss in this weeks’ edition of City Watch, including the very sad passing of ex City manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, so I’ll be as brief as possible with the match review of the West Ham game.

Unbelievably, I was allocated lower tier tickets for the game on Saturday evening, which, if you’ve never been to the London stadium, is much better than sitting in the upper tier where you feel miles away from the pitch. So, with a great view, I watched another great performance by Pep’s players unfold. Although the Hammers started the better team, City opened the scoring after just 10 minutes, the goal coming from, who would’ve guessed, Erling Haaland. Just nine minutes later, however, Dias put the ball in his own net from a Jarrod Bowen cross, leaving the game at 1-1.

This didn’t prove to be an issue though, as Erling Haaland added to his early goal, hitting the back of the net in the 30th and 83rd minute. Another hat trick for Haaland takes him up to eight in the Premier League, just four behind Sergio Aguero and the all time record of 12. There really is no stopping him when he’s in that kind of form, it also means his goal tally for the season is up to seven after just three games and will keep the Blues at the top of the table going into the international break.

There were tributes before the game to the late Sven-Goran Eriksson, whose very sad passing was announced last week. I’ll be completely honest, Sven as the City manager was before my time as a fan, certainly before I could fully understand the role he played at the club not just as a manager but as a figure, I was only six at the time. However, just from tributes he’s received and stories I’ve heard, I know he played an incredibly important role in an unstable time at the club

I have to admit, I’m not a particularly emotional person, however, I watched the recording he released days before he passed and it completely moved me. As the City fans sung out his name before the match on Saturday, I truly appreciated everything he did not just for Manchester City, but also for football. Thank you Sven, and may you Rest in Peace.

Without sounding too cold hearted, there is one more topic I’d like to discuss in this weeks column. Man City learnt their fate for the Carabao Cup and Champions League last week, with new draw formats to both.

Starting with the League Cup, if you didn’t watch the draw, there was a new format in which the third round picks where pulled out. There was a what was described as a ‘pre-draw’ where the teams in European competition this season were effectively chosen to be home or away. This meant when the actual draw came around, they couldn’t draw eachother, which is said to be because of the new Champions League format.

As a City fan, the new draw is great for us, it means we most likely avoid any big teams and have an easier route to the next round. As a neutral, however, I do have to question whether the new format is the fair way of drawing teams. Either way, the Blues will play Watford at the Etihad in their League Cup fixture, a game that in recent history has involved quite a few City goals, I bet Haaland’s happy about that!

The other draw that took place last week was for the Champions League. Instead of having a selection of small groups drawn out, all teams now go into one big table and are all drawn against eight different teams, playing four at home and four away. Again, I do question the motives behind the new format, and whether this is a fair way to draw teams, mostly because it wasn’t the traditional balls out of a pot, it was done by a computer.

Regardless, to make it as brief as possible, City’s home games include Inter Milan, Sparta Prague, Feyenoord and Club Brugge. The away fixtures will be against Slovan Bratislava, Sporting Lisbon, Juventus and PSG. The European competition starts in just a few weeks and group games will conclude in early January.

We now head into an international break for a few weeks, but when City return, they will be playing Brentford in the Premier League followed by their first Champions League fixture against Inter Milan.