Over-reliance on Haaland wasn’t supposed to be part of Manchester City’s vocabulary. Guardiola’s side has always been built on fluidity – creators everywhere, goals shared across the pitch, and an attack that didn’t outrightly need a traditional No.9 to function.
Even now, Erling Haaland isn’t the type of striker who dominates by crafting chances on his own. City still do the heavy lifting: the cut-backs, the overloads, the threaded passes, the box entries. The machine around him works exactly as designed.
But here’s the twist – despite all that collective structure, Haaland is becoming the only truly credible source of goals. When the chances fall to him, City breathe. When they fall to anyone else, the conviction isn’t the same. The midfielders recycle the ball, the wingers hesitate, and the finishing touch evaporates.
So the issue isn’t that City relies on Haaland to create magic out of nothing. The issue is that Man City’s over-reliance on Haaland is turning him into the only player consistently converting possession into goals.
That subtle shift, from a multi-threat attack to a one-outlet dependency, is quietly reshaping City’s identity. And the more it repeats itself, the harder it becomes to ignore.
Haaland’s Brilliance – and the Warning Hidden Inside the Numbers
Erling Haaland has delivered exactly what every elite club dreams of when they sign a marquee striker: consistency, volume, and a level of efficiency that bends entire seasons in their favour.
Since arriving at Manchester City, his contribution has been textbook centre-forward excellence. Scoring 28% to 38% of your team’s goals is typically a mark of a world-class No.9 – the kind of return managers welcome, not fear.
Across his first three seasons, Haaland’s output was high but healthy. He led the line with devastating precision, City produced chances in waves, and his numbers sat within the normal range for a team with a reliable goalscorer. In those years, his brilliance was a luxury layered on top of a multi-threat attack.
But this season tells a very different story.
With 58% of Manchester City’s Premier League goals coming from Haaland so far, Man City’s over-reliance on Haaland becomes impossible to deny.
The data no longer paints a picture of balance – it paints a picture of dependence. A striker scoring nearly 60% of a top team’s goals is unheard of at the title-challenging level. It doesn’t just highlight Haaland’s quality; it exposes a structural problem brewing underneath City’s surface.
At 38%, you applaud your striker. At 28%, you call it a healthy spread. Even 40% signals excellence.
But 58%? That’s no longer brilliance – that’s a warning sign.
It shows Haaland is doing his job almost too well…and everyone else is not doing theirs nearly enough.
Instead of being one of several reliable outlets, Haaland has become the outlet. The goals that once came from wide areas, midfield runners, and rotational patterns simply aren’t appearing from anyone else with the necessary frequency. City still creates chances, but they no longer convert them unless Haaland is at the end of the move.
This season’s spike doesn’t just expose how lethal he is, it underlines how fragile City become the moment he doesn’t score.
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The Results Tell Their Own Story – And Reveal Man City’s Over-Reliance on Haaland
Numbers can reveal a striker’s importance, but results reveal a team’s reality – and City’s reality this season is brutally clear.
Across 17 matches in the Premier League and Champions League, Manchester City have:
- Won: 10
- Drawn: 2
- Lost: 5
And here’s the thread that ties the positive results together:
City’s 10 wins and two draws all came in matches where Erling Haaland scored. Every time City avoided defeat, their No.9 was on the scoresheet. Every single time.
Now flip that pattern:
In the five matches they lost, Haaland scored in only one – the 2-1 defeat to Brighton. In the other four losses, he was silent, and City were beaten.
This doesn’t repeat the concerns of the previous section – it deepens them. Because this isn’t about how many of City’s goals Haaland scores anymore. It’s about what happens to City when he doesn’t score at all.
And the message is uncomfortably simple: “Stop Haaland, and you stop Manchester City.”
Stopping him is never easy – he’s one of the most dangerous forwards in world football – but the trend exposes a vulnerability City haven’t shown in years. When Haaland doesn’t deliver, City struggle to find alternative routes to victory. Their midfield doesn’t compensate. The wings don’t compensate. The system doesn’t self-correct the way Guardiola’s teams usually do.
It’s not that City look weaker when Haaland doesn’t score – they look beatable.
And for a club known for its philosophy of collective threat, that shift is more telling than any goal tally.
The Need for Others to Step Up
For all of Erling Haaland’s brilliance, Manchester City were never built to be a one-man finishing machine. Their dominance under Pep Guardiola came from a rotating cast of match-winners – players who shared the load, stretched defences, and arrived in decisive moments.
This season, that balance has slipped, and the supporting cast must now reclaim their influence.
Players like Jérémy Doku, Savinho, and Rayan Cherki have the talent to change games, but the level of final-third aggression hasn’t matched their potential. Doku’s dribbling still terrifies full-backs, Savinho is yet to show the qualities that got him signed by City, and Cherki is finally piecing together some consistency – yet none of them have produced the volume of goals needed to ease the burden of over-reliance on Haaland.
Then there’s Bernardo Silva, one of the most experienced leaders in this squad. At this stage in his City career, his influence must stretch beyond control and creativity. City need goals, late runs, shots taken instead of recycled, and leadership expressed in decisive actions – not just in tempo-setting or possession.
But the biggest expectation sits on Phil Foden, who still hasn’t hit his projected heights. His PFA Player of the Year campaign showed the version of Foden City desperately need now: bold, ruthless, willing to take responsibility in the box, and brave enough to turn half-chances into goals. That version of him hasn’t fully appeared this season – but if City are going to climb back into the title conversation, he must ignite again.
Part of City’s problem may even be psychological.
When the ball touches Haaland’s feet inside the box, players instinctively assume that it is the safest path to a goal. And in many cases, it is. But when a team becomes conditioned to defer to one source, complacency quietly grows – fewer risks, fewer individual decisions, fewer attempts from unexpected angles.
It showed in their 2-1 loss to Newcastle, and it was even clearer in the 2-0 defeat at the Etihad against Bayer Leverkusen. Immediately Haaland came on in the 65th minute, City’s players seemed too eager to force the ball to Haaland in the box, even in situations where they could use his presence to pull defenders away and pick out a better-placed teammate.
A bit of healthy competition wouldn’t hurt. City’s greatest seasons thrived on the hunger of players eager to prove they could finish moves, not just create them. When others feel empowered to shoot, arrive in scoring zones, and compete with Haaland – instead of simply serving him – the attack becomes unpredictable again.
Because if this trend continues – if over-reliance on Haaland remains the defining feature of this attack – City’s title hopes drift further away. Not just this season, but potentially for years.
And the narrative begins to resemble a familiar Premier League story: a world-class striker, extraordinary numbers, but a team too dependent to truly contend. Much like Tottenham with Harry Kane, City risk becoming a side where one man carries the weight others should share.
Manchester City don’t need to replace Haaland’s goals. They need to match his urgency.
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City’s Future Depends on Breaking This Pattern
Erling Haaland is doing exactly what an elite striker should do – scoring at a rate most managers can only dream of. The problem isn’t his output.
The problem is what happens around him.
Manchester City’s attack has tilted into a shape where one man carries too much of the scoring responsibility. The statistics prove it, the results confirm it, and the performances reveal it: when Haaland fires, City look unstoppable. When he doesn’t, they look ordinary – and at times, even vulnerable.
This isn’t a blueprint for winning a Premier League title. It’s a warning.
If City are serious about staying in the title race, the rest of the squad must reclaim their goal-scoring instincts – Foden rediscovering his ruthless edge, Doku driving beyond mere dribbles, Savinho and Cherki growing into end-product threats, and Bernardo Silva using his experience to influence games that matter.
Haaland will continue to score. That’s a certainty.
What’s uncertain is whether the players around him will step into the spaces he can’t fill.
Because if Manchester City keep moving in this direction, the Premier League title won’t just drift away this season – it may stay out of reach for a long time. And a team with one of the greatest strikers in world football may start looking like a familiar story: brilliant individual, brilliant numbers, but not enough collective firepower to turn potential into trophies.
Manchester City don’t need to stop relying on Haaland. They simply need to stop relying only on him.
Main Photo
Credit: IMAGO / Every Second Media
Recording Date: 25.11.2025
