Giant Haaland leads Manchester City to victory with a “new hat-trick”

Norwegian giant striker Erling Haaland scored his second consecutive hat-trick and led Manchester City, the title winner for the past four years, to its third consecutive victory since the beginning of the season after beating its host West Ham 3-1 in the third round of the English Premier League.

Haaland scored his first hat-trick this season against Ipswich Town last week (4-1).

Spanish midfielder Rodri continued to be absent from the starting lineup after his compatriot coach Pep Guardiola gave him an extra rest due to his many appearances last season and then with his country’s national team that won the European Cup this summer, so he sat on the bench of the reserve players.

City pressed from the start and their striker Haaland wasted an easy chance to open the scoring when he received a perfect cross from the Portuguese Bernardo Silva with the goal wide in front of him, but he headed the ball over the crossbar (6).

Haaland made up for it five minutes later when he took advantage of a wonderful through ball from Silva as well, and found himself alone with the French goalkeeper, Alphonse Areola, and fired a low shot to his right (11).

Contrary to the course of play, West Ham managed to equalise when their captain Jared Bowen carried the ball a long distance on the right side and passed a cross that City’s Portuguese centre-back Ruben Dias tried to clear, but he shot it deceptively into the goal of the Brazilian Ederson (19).

But City took the lead again after a great joint play between Jack Grealish, Silva and Rico Lewis, which reached Haaland, who shot it with his left foot into the roof of the net (30).

Haaland ended the suspense when he scored his third goal, taking advantage of a reverse pass from Portuguese Matheus Nunes to find himself alone with Polish substitute goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski, who came on as a substitute at the beginning of the second half and shot a curling ball from above into the net (83).

The hat-trick is Haaland’s 24th in his career, and his eighth for Manchester City. Haaland has now scored 7 goals in 3 matches this season, extending his lead in the top scorers’ list. He also scored his 70th goal in the English Premier League in 69 matches.