Striker Erling Haaland comes into the game on the back of scoring an incredible five goals in Norway’s 11-1 hammering of Moldova during the recent World Cup qualifiers.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old’s goal in the defeat at Brighton before the break also took his tally to 88 in just 100 Premier League games – the most by a player to reach that milestone.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Friday, Liverpool boss Arne Slot described Alexander Isak as “maybe the best striker in the world” following the Sweden international’s move to Anfield for a British record \u00a3125m fee.<\/p>\n
But Guardiola responded: “Erling is a little bit above.<\/p>\n
“Isak is an exceptional player. You ask what Erling is as a striker – he’s the top. But Isak must be a top player for what they paid, obviously.<\/p>\n
“Another person would say [Kylian] Mbappe, another person would say [Lionel] Messi, another person would say Cristiano [Ronaldo]. That’s fine. It is a game of opinions and everyone has the right to an opinion.<\/p>\n
“What I’m saying is that I would not change Erling for anyone. I know him. He is incredible as a player, adorable as a person and I like him.”<\/p>\n
City go into the 197th derby on the back of consecutive league defeats and are 13th in the table, with United a point ahead in ninth.<\/p>\n
It is the first time they have trailed their rivals heading into a Manchester derby since 2020.<\/p>\n
Haaland told Viaplay: “We’ve lost two games in a row, it’s not good enough, it’s way too bad. We need to figure it out, get back to winning ways. We can’t afford to lose games, as there’s so many good teams.<\/p>\n
“It’s perfect to turn things around against United. We need to all be on our best, get our asses going, get things going, because it’s not been good enough so far.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Striker Erling Haaland comes into the game on the back of scoring an incredible five goals in Norway’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-151801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}