Pep Guardiola salutes ‘unstoppable’ Erling Haaland after West Ham hat-trick

Pep Guardiola said that even a defender carrying a gun would not be able to stop Erling Haaland after the striker scored a second consecutive hat-trick in Manchester City’s 3-1 win over West Ham.

Haaland, who has started the new campaign with seven goals in City’s first three games, is looking back to his best after struggling with a fitness problem at the end of last season.

“He’s playing much better in everything,” Guardiola said. “He stays 20 minutes or half an hour after training sessions. Last season not even once was he there because he didn’t feel good – tired, niggles.

“What he needs is the team to give him more balls in the final third. We’re going to create those situations. He’s unstoppable, there’s no central defender, not even with a gun to stop him.”

Guardiola was delighted with Haaland’s general play. “Always he scores goals and it’s what he has to do,” City’s manager said. “We are happy for another hat-trick, the quality of the finishing, but he was involved with the game today, he didn’t lose one ball and he played unbelievable – not just with the ball but also defensively and offensively.

“I’m really pleased for him but now officially pre-season is over. The international break starts the real season, so we see how he recovers from this amount of games. I’m not a physio or doctor, so I don’t know [about his recovery].

“Not just Erling but everyone. Today again we made just one change because Savinho was not able to play and these three games we played the same team more or less because of many reasons – Rico [Lewis] and [Mateo] Kovacic deserve to play but from now on everyone is going to play because we cannot sustain this rhythm every three days for 11 months. All the players look fit. Matheus Nunes made an assist like Kevin De Bruyne. Everyone played really good.”

Another boost for City, who have won their first three matches, was seeing Jack Grealish shine on his first start since April. The winger was a shock omission from Gareth Southgate’s England squad at Euro 2024 but he was in good shape two days after being handed an international recall by Lee Carsley.

“It’s really good,” Guardiola said. “He was aggressive without the ball but especially with the ball against [Aaron] Wan-Bissaka and made good actions. Hopefully he can come back fit and better. All my English players, I would like them to go to the national team when they are fit and the other nationalities the same. I don’t like when they’re not completely fit and they go but with the power of the national team we don’t have anything to say.”