Haaland keeps his cool and turns up heat on Arsenal as Gabriel loses his head

Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhães and City’s Erling Haaland go head to head. Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images/Reuters

“If I go down, it’s a red card … like any other guy would do,” Haaland said. “I will never do this. My father taught me this – stay on your feet and don’t be a … I won’t say the word but it starts with ‘P’. Maybe yes I should have gone down. Maybe it would be easier but I didn’t. And I got a yellow card for it!”

Haaland laughed at that last bit and with him, there is often a playfulness that accompanies the ferocity with which he competes. It was there when he considered the scratches and bruises from his duel with Gabriel. “A lot of scratches,” he said. “Sometimes my missus is not so happy about this … it looks a bit wrong.”

And it was there when he assessed the title race. Haaland wants to focus on City and especially their next game, which is at Burnley on Wednesday night. Win that and they would move level with Arsenal. He really does not want to talk about them and yet, well, he cannot resist the odd nibble.

Arsenal had arrived on the back of their damaging home defeat against Bournemouth the previous weekend. “Of course, you watch the game against Bournemouth … the whole of England watched this game,” Haaland said.

Were City now in Arsenal’s heads? “I don’t know,” Haaland replied. “You need to ask them. The last seasons they’ve come up short.”

Haaland also dropped into the conversation how City were “calm” and “there are a few of us who have been in this situation before”. In other words, a good number who know what it takes to stay the course in a championship fight. City had a handful of players in their starting lineup who have not won a league title. They were offset by the likes of Bernardo Silva and Rodri; Haaland, too, who at 25 is one of the leaders of this team.

Erling Haaland holds off Gabriel Magalhães during an old-school battle between the pair. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Arsenal’s XI at the Etihad contained two players who had previously won a league championship. Gabriel won the Croatian title with Dinamo Zagreb in 2017-18; Piero Hincapié was a Bundesliga champion with Bayer Leverkusen in 2023-24.

Arsenal have indeed come up short in the recent past; they have been the runners-up in each of the previous three seasons and what gives Haaland and City the belief is their knowhow in these situations. In stride-for-stride races for the line under Guardiola, when there has been no margin for error, they have always won – in 2018-19 and 2021-22 against Liverpool, and in 2023-24 against Arsenal.

“After West Ham [where City drew on 14 March], everybody wrote that it was over,” Haaland said. “That was the feeling. But you have to focus game by game. That’s the reality of this club in this title race because the last weeks are when things get decided.”