Manchester City striker Erling Haaland may have drawn a blank for the first time this season in the Premier League at the weekend in a 1-1 draw with Newcastle United, but there will be no doubts over the striker’s importance with the team.
A blistering start to the season has seen him net ten goals in eight matches across all competitions so far this term, as Pep Guardiola’s men target a record-extending fifth consecutive Premier League title.
Manchester City’s contract ‘doubts’ over Erling Haaland
Manchester City are gunning for more glory this season (Image credit: Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
Reports in Spain, cited by TEAMtalk, have put a question mark next to the Norwegian’s future plans.
They claim that with the club keen to tie him down to a longer-term deal as soon as they can, the player is “starting to rethink his future at the club” and that Haaland is “considering not accepting the renewal proposals that are on the table” amid “doubts about his continuity”.
While the players is said to be comfortable at City, they add that his future ambitions mean that he may look to explore other opportunities in the “near future”.
A scenario where the forward “considers the possibility of forcing his exit next season” is also mooted, with the player said to want a £100million release in his new contract, a figure that would put him in easy reach of Europe’s biggest clubs.
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Erling Haaland and Phil Foden celebrate another Premier League title (Image credit: Getty Images)
In FourFourTwo’s opinion, it would be something of a surprise if Haaland was not the subject of regular links to Real Madrid. The City’s man goalscoring record and the transfer tactics of the Spanish press all point towards this being a fact of life.
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Haaland is valued at €180million by Transfermarkt – the joint highest figure of any player on the planet, alongside Real Madrid trio Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior and Kylian Mbappe – so City will obviously want to tie him down for as long as they can.
On the other side of the equation, at the age of 24, it would be naive to expect the player to rule out of moving clubs, so fans will need to get used to these sort of stories.
