Erling Haaland continued his fine goalscoring streak as Manchester City beat Villarreal in their third UEFA Champions League Group Phase match.
His first half strike along with a header by Bernardo Silva earned City a relatively easy victory in a potential banana skin of a match against 3rd place in La Liga Villarreal.
Here are three things we learned from victory in Spain:
Nico’s injury could be costly
With Rodri declared not fit for a little while and Nico Gonzalez going off injured, City are looking
short in numbers at the base of midfield.
Mateo Kovacic can play there and played well numerous times last season in particular as a defensive midfielder, but he isn’t fully fit after five months out following achilles surgery.
John Stones would be the next best option, but he plays best as a centre back and the next injury is never far away with the 31-year-old defender.
Hopefully Nico’s injury doesn’t prove to be too severe, or else the Blues may face many of the same midfield difficulties they suffered from last season.
Haaland scores… again
12 games in a row now for club and country, Haaland just isn’t slowing down.
The Norwegian striker is clearly the best in the world in his position despite the amazing form of Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane, and his goalscoring and allround game is going from strength to strength.
Haaland is something of a one man attack at the moment, which whilst problematic for City in some respects (an injury could be catastrophic) also means we never have to worry about a consistent stream of goals whilst he is about.
Savinho much improved
I’m Savinho’s biggest critic but he was much better against Villarreal than he has been in recent weeks and played a big part in both goals.
Firstly, his patience in the build up for the first goal in choosing exactly the right time to play the ball to Rico Lewis after playing the safe ball backwards a few times was a sign of maturity and development.
The second goal was a nice cross – nothing too difficult or over the top about it but nonetheless a good delivery providing Bernardo with an easy finish.
He’s still got some way to go to get up to standard I think, starting with performances like this as a baseline every single week.
But it was much better, and is hopefully a sign that the Brazilian winger is beginning to come good.
