Erling Haaland’s brace of perfect moments see off West Ham for Man City

Manchester City and Erling Haaland only needed two moments to demonstrate why they will be such a potent combination in the Premier League.

‘Dour’ isn’t a word that you hear too much of in the modern Premier League, but back in the days when players used boots like clogs and balls like cannonballs, it was everywhere. In the gloom of the under-powered floodlights of the past, football in this country was played with a mood of steely determination, on pitches of sand and precious little grass.

Football isn’t dour any more, but one of the last holdouts of dourness might be West Ham United manager David Moyes. He’s now the oldest manager in the Premier League at 59 years old, and while there are now no top flight managers left who played the game professionally in the 1970s, Moyes started his with Celtic’s under-20 team in 1980 and his occasional hangdog expressions can occasionally feel like a callback to a different era.

But in the 21st century football is product. There’s little space for dourness, anymore. Pitches of the colour and consistency of chocolate pudding being peered at through a fog of cigarette smoke and ledded petrol fumes don’t fit with the age of high definition television, and no football club represents this change better than Manchester City.

Fuelled by riches borne of fossil fuels in a far-off country, City have glinted and gleamed their way to five of the last six Premier League titles. They are a project, a world of luxury that would have been unrecognisable to anybody when David Moyes was plying his trade for Celtic. They are about marquee signings, and they are about control.

And in Pep Guardiola, they have a manager very much unlike David Moyes. Guardiola is only eight years younger than his West Ham counterpart, but when making his professional debut for Barcelona C in 1988 he was emerging into a different world. As a player, David Moyes won the Scottish Premier Division, the Associates Members Cup and the Third Division championship. Guardiola won the La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the European Cup.

For the first 45 minutes of this match Manchester City were certainly in control, with 79% of possession and 697 passes to West Ham’s 189, but much of this possession felt of little consequence. West Ham’s defence had been sitting successfully deep for 35 minute with few problems. Triangles came and triangles went, but City mostly huffed and puffed while West Ham soaked them up without too much…