Erling Haaland ‘brutal’ and ‘raging’ after clashes with three Chelsea players

Editor F365
Erling Haaland and Enzo Fernandez
Erling Haaland and Enzo Fernandez

You would think that Erling Haaland would be happy after scoring for Man City but he was busy ‘raging’ and being ‘brutal’ to Chelsea.

 

Stat’s entertainment
You don’t have to tell us that Enzo Fernandez was poor on Sunday at Stamford Bridge (it featured in quite a few of our 16 Conclusions) but The Sun trying to illustrate this with new-fangled statistics is really quite something.

It’s like giving a calculator to a three-year-old and thinking he is going to knock out a couple of quadratic equations.

‘Fernandez made little attacking impact as the Blues opened their Premier League season with a 2-0 home loss to champs Manchester City’ is a strong second paragraph about the player who literally had more shots than anybody else on the pitch.

True, he did complete 45 passes, with seven others not completed.

But our map of every ball he delivered shows the vast majority were pretty much sent sideways rather than forward.

If you’re going to venture into the world of statistics, you can’t be saying passes are ‘pretty much sent sideways’; that’s just guessing.

The actual statistics show you that only one Chelsea player attempted more forward passes (Marc Cucurella) and he almost matched Kevin de Bruyne on that metric.

But it would help if The Sun actually knew where Fernandez played…

Nicolas Jackson was Chelsea’s only out-and-out frontman against Pep Guardiola’s stylists.

Cole Palmer, by far last season’s main man for goals and assists, played just behind.

Nope. Palmer played on the right; Fernandez played ‘just behind’ Jackson.

Fernandez had one of Chelsea’s only three efforts on target as they amassed just 10 goal attempts in all.

But he made no dribbles, won just two tackles and only once put in an accurate cross.

Hands up if you are surprised that a player not known for his dribbling made no dribbles, the most advanced midfielder made very few tackles and a player who largely played in the middle feeding the wide players made very few crosses himself.

By all means criticise him for his half-hearted press and for his racism, but these statistics tell you nothing of the sort. Unless Opta have a new statistic detailing racist songs sung per 90.

 

Hammer time
Handing match report duties for the biggest game of the Premier League weekend to a West Ham fan was a curious choice by The Sun.

This is how it begins…

ONE TEAM is facing a record 115 charges of dodgy dealing.

The other had its captain join his team-mates taking the knee just weeks after apologising for making racist remarks.

…and it pretty much continues in that vein, taking in lines such as ‘Manchester City, imperious, title winners four times in a row, rocked up at the Chelsea nuthouse with the clock ticking on an epic hearing into allegations of serious books cooking over the years’, before the small matter of football is even remotely considered.

In fact, it takes Andy Dillon 18 paragraphs before he mentions any of the football at all, at which point Erling Haaland gets a name-check for the tiny detail of scoring the opening goal for the champions.

Maybe next time don’t give the big Chelsea game to a dyed-in-the-wool Hammer, guys.

 

Rage against the Argentine machine
Desperate for a controversial angle to a pretty humdrum game, the Mirror bring us this headline:

Erling Haaland rages at Enzo Fernandez after Manchester City’s win at Chelsea

Thanks to social media, we can now watch that ‘rage’ together:

He really, really loses it.

 

Haal is (not) revealed
Imagine how the raging Erling Haaland he must feel about Wesley Fofana after the Frenchman laughed in his vicinity.

Actually, we don’t have to imagine because football.london have the full lowdown:

Why Wesley Fofana laughed at Erling Haaland as Chelsea face defining days in transfer window

We’re not sure laughing at the best goalscorer in world football is sensible, but tell us why…

There was one moment in the second-half where the striker went head-to-head with the defender in a physical tussle. It ended up in Man City winning a throw-in. Fofana had won the battle, albeit a small one in the grand scheme of things, and Haaland was not happy.

There was an exchange of words, unfortunately inaudible, between the pair before Fofana laughed at the Norwegian while running backwards towards his own goal. It was a really nice moment.

And a nice headline. Which promised information that was absolutely not delivered. Standard.

 

Haal or nothing
It was a busy old beef day for Erling Haaland, who also managed to ‘brutally cut down Marc Cucurella with 15-word response after Man City goal’ (MEN), by – and this does seem important – saying 42 words that were not remotely ‘brutal’. Here they are in full:

“It was an interesting song, that, from that guy (Cucurella). There’s not that much to say. I don’t really think about that. He can do what he wants. Last year he asked me for my jersey, and then he starts singing about me.”

That’s ‘brutal’, ‘raging’ Erling Haaland, slowly recovering from being laughed at by Wesley Fofana for winning a throw-in.

Mediawatch Enzo Fernandez

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