Pep Guardiola says Man City’s Erling Haaland is undroppable after another hat-trick

Pep Guardiola hailed Erling Haaland as undroppable after the brilliant Norwegian scored yet another hat-trick in 17 in-game minutes to clinch a 3-0 win for Manchester City over Wolves.

Haaland claimed his fourth treble of the season – taking his tally to an incredible 31 goals in 26 games in all competitions – as the Premier League champions responded strongly to their manager’s complaints.

Guardiola moaned about his side’s recent performances and Haaland’s treble was a perfect way to answer claims City had become a worse team, in terms of style at least, since the striker’s arrival.

‘When he scores I don’t know how many hat-tricks and goals, (people say) he is the solution in our team and when he does not score he is a problem in our team,’ said Guardiola.

‘This is a grey vision of this kind of things. We know his quality, we know each other. He is not a player to be dropped. We cannot play a false nine with him, we have to adapt with him and I think we are doing quite well.’

“He is not a guy who is going to take the ball 10 metres behind the box, dribble two or three and score a goal. It’s not a possibility.

“He has to get the balls being delivered as much as possible, we have fantastic players around him. But the first goal is because he is there and the ball from Kevin is fantastic.

“Always I believe, we know each other, he lives 24 hours for his job, his passion, his love. He does not stress much when it is going well or bad.

“He’s stable. He feels the defeats. It’s really good. The numbers are incredible. I didn’t know it but this many goals in the first game of the second leg [second half of the season] he’s already scored. But the reality is still we are behind a bit longer to Arsenal.”

Guardiola has been unhappy about City’s recent loss of sparkle and he added: ‘Today we improved but it was just today, we will see what happens in the next games.

‘People will see goals from Erling, the assists from Kevin [De Bruyne] and the actions from Riyad [Mahrez] but there are things still to improve.’