Erling answers the City call to keep up title pace

Premier League: Nottingham Forest 0 Man City 2

Erling Haaland answered the call for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City to ensure that his manager’s 300th game in charge of the club ended with a 221st victory.

Four more over the remaining three weeks of the current season will guarantee something else; a fourth consecutive league title, something no team has ever achieved since the competition came into being in 1889.

That is the territory we are entering as City prepare for Saturday’s home game with Wolves and a final day visit of West Ham, book-ending trips to Fulham and Spurs in London.

This is a manager for the ages, a team for the ages, who could be about to do something no team has ever done before and, who knows, may not do for the next 135 years of English football, either.

It would certainly take a bold bet to wager against that happening and, surely, only the most optimistic of Arsenal fans would do so, as Haaland’s second goal ensured City kept pace with them, in what has become a breathless two-horse title sprint with Arsenal.

Struggling Forest threatened to punish a sub-par performance from a City side without the ill Phil Foden and with Haaland starting on the bench as he recovers from injury.

But, nine minutes after coming on, the Norwegian jumped onto a through ball from Kevin De Bruyne, one of two assists he would provide on the day, and skipped past Murillo before rolling in a superb 70th minute finish.

“We would prefer Arsenal lose but we cannot control what they do,” said Guardiola. “We have to assume they are not going to lose any points and so we know what we have to do.

“It was really hard. We knew how the game was going to happen and we were so lucky, with the chances they had and the conditions