13 times! Haaland leads by a cliff, Manchester City and Arsenal go from extreme to another extreme

After the 10th round of the Premier League, the traditional top six slowly returned to their proper positions. Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool ranked in the top three respectively. Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United had the same points, only 1 point behind Sunderland and Bournemouth, ranking 6th to 8th in order. In addition to Arsenal extending their lead to 6 points, second-placed Manchester City is only 2 points more than eighth-placed Manchester United. The competition is quite fierce.

However, a special statistic is worthy of discussion. The top two teams, Arsenal and Manchester City, are 6 points apart. The reasons are of course multi-faceted. Among them, the influence of Haaland cannot be ignored. If we look at the results alone, the reason why Manchester City is 6 points behind Arsenal and Haaland did not score is one of the key factors.

Arsenal has achieved impressive results in the Premier League with 8 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss, and only two games failed to win. In the third round, they lost to Liverpool away from home. This was the only game in which Arsenal did not score a goal, and they lost. In the fifth round of the home draw with Manchester City, Martinelli didn't score the equalizer until stoppage time in the second half to avoid a second defeat.

In Arsenal's team's scorer list, Jokeres ranks first with 4 goals, followed by Rice, Saka, Subimendi and Timber, who all scored 2 goals, and the remaining players scored 1 goal each. It can be seen that Arsenal's goals are widely distributed, with a total of 11 people scoring goals. More goals can indeed make the opponent hard to guard against. However, as the top scorer, Jocles can only be ranked 6th to 13th in the Premier League scorer list. There is no outstanding efficient shooter, which is far from the Sporting CP era.

Therefore, when Arsenal needs to score, it is difficult to find a "reliable" scoring point. Five of the 10 league games ended with 1-0 or 2-0, and the total goals scored were only 18, which is not actually high. Manchester City scored a total of 20 goals, the most in the Premier League. Liverpool and Chelsea both scored 18 goals. Even Bournemouth, Brighton, and even Manchester United scored 17 goals. It can only be said that Arsenal's defense is so good. They have only conceded 3 goals so far. As long as they don't concede a goal in the game, they can get all three points.

Looking at Manchester City, it's another story. At present, Manchester City has 6 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses, losing two more games than Arsenal, so it is 6 points behind. Let’s take a look at these three losses. In the second round, Manchester City did not score and lost to Tottenham by two goals. In the third round, Haaland scored first, but Manchester City was eventually reversed by Brighton and lost. In the ninth round, Manchester City did not score and lost to Aston Villa by one goal. It can be clearly seen from this data that Haaland did not score in two games and Manchester City suffered a defeat.

Why is it a disadvantage for Manchester City if the top scorer fails to score in a game?

In Manchester City's team scorer list, Haaland scored a total of 13 goals. The next five teammates only scored one goal. Only 6 people in total could score. Haaland was 13 times as high as the second place. This number is really terrible! Some fans may have discovered, didn't Manchester City score 20 goals, and who did the other 2 goals belong to? It turns out that in Manchester City's victory over newly promoted Burnley, the opponent's defender Esteve contributed two own goals. In a sense, Esteve is Manchester City's second shooter.

Obviously, Manchester City's goals are highly concentrated on Haaland alone. Indeed, a super center should perform like this. Not only Manchester City, but Norway also benefits from Haaland's continuous goals. In the last two European qualifiers, Haaland scored 4 and 5 goals respectively, and scored 9 goals in the two games, leaving Italy, which was 16 goals behind on goal difference, in complete despair. Therefore, as long as Haaland cannot score, Manchester City does not have much to do and suffered two defeats.

Arsenal and Manchester City have gone from one extreme to another in terms of goal distribution. Some people say that Arsenal's goals are too scattered and there is no efficient shooter that they can rely on, which has triggered concerns about "scattered firepower". Manchester City's goals are too single and they are highly dependent on Haaland, which has triggered concerns about "single firepower."

Two completely different models, which one do you prefer?