Haaland and Cherki partnership flourishes as Pep gets balance right

Football writer Ninad Barbadikar analyses Manchester City's 3-1 win over AFC Bournemouth on Sunday.

Manchester City got back to winning ways after losing to Aston Villa last time out, with Pep Guardiola’s attackers helping unsettle Andoni Iraola’s Cherries.

Coming into the game as the league’s form side, there was an expectation that AFC Bournemouth would make life difficult for Manchester City with their intense ways out of possession.

And in some respects, that did prove to be true in the opening period, with Iraola’s side fashioning two chances within the space of five minutes, all down to their well-timed tackles and suffocating press.

In the defeat against Aston Villa previously, City struggled to win the midfield battle and paid the price for it, with Unai Emery’s side taking full advantage of a City midfield lacking control and composure, deploying Tijjani Reijnders in the deepest role.

While that loss was also one where City attackers were left frustrated with their lack of clinical edge, the game against Bournemouth was the exact opposite, with Erling Haaland and Rayan Cherki starring.

Bournemouth’s early momentum was killed off once City found their groove in the game and were able to play through the Cherries with ease.

This was evident in the first of two goals from Haaland, where none of City’s attackers are occupying wide berths. Instead, Nico Gonzalez has several options to pick out in behind Bournemouth’s midfield line.

He picks out the furthest option in Cherki, who heads the lobbed pass into the path of Haaland, who already had a yard on Bournemouth’s high line and finished with ease 1v1 past Djordje Petrovic.

What would have been particularly disappointing for Iraola was how easily his side let that first goal happen. It was a long clearance from Gianluigi Donnarumma that started the whole sequence for the hosts, who in the space of less than five passes managed to get the ball to Haaland, not too dissimilar to the direct nature of Bournemouth themselves.

This is perhaps a sign that Guardiola is once again adapting his style to find a balance between control and leaning into the transitional game that Bournemouth so often look to enjoy against teams.

That was Haaland’s 12th Premier League goal of the season, coming in only his 10th league appearance. Incredibly, only Les Ferdinand, with 13 in 1995/96, and Haaland himself, with 15 in 2022/23, have had better goalscoring starts to a season.

Zooming further out, City’s goal machine now has 26 goals for club and country this season, and as each week goes by, he’s looking sharper and stronger than before.

Set-piece reprieve for Cherries

To their credit though, Bournemouth did manage to bounce back, via a set-piece, which is increasingly becoming a reliable source of goals for Premier League sides.

Tyler Adams, of all people, capitalised on a mistake by Donnarumma to level the game.

That respite for the Cherries would not last long though, with Haaland breaking away from the Cherries centre-backs yet again in transition, taking the ball past Petrovic and then finishing into an empty net to register his 98th Premier League goal.

Nico O’Reilly settled the game on the hour mark, drilling a low shot into the Cherries net from a Phil Foden assist. It was a milestone evening for City’s No 47, who became the youngest Man City player to reach 200 Premier League appearances. 

While Haaland’s goals were decisive as ever for City, it was the team as a whole who collectively put in a stellar performance off the ball to go toe-to-toe with Iraola’s side.

“We had to be so co-ordinated with the pressing and with our defending,” Guardiola told Sky Sports.

“Here was tight and always it is tight with them. They are so intense and aggressive."

With the likes of Jeremy Doku, Foden and Cherki in the creative unit behind Haaland, City had the personnel to play precisely the kind of combination play in central areas that can pick apart aggressive man-to-man units, which is how they were also able to score their second goal.

Gonzalez’s line-breaking pass found the feet of Foden, who was occupying the space between the Bournemouth lines, close to their double-pivot in midfield.

His square pass to an unmarked Cherki created the Frenchman’s second assist for Haaland.

For the second time in the game, Cherries defender Marcos Senesi was caught off guard pressing up into midfield, allowing Haaland to easily dominate Bafode Diakite to grab his brace.

This is just the consequence of Iraola’s style of play, however. Most days it will work, as evidenced by their hugely impressive start to the season.

But on the days when they have bad moments created by errors in routines, it costs them dearly. The Bournemouth head coach admitted as much after the game.

"In the first half we made mistakes, and the goals, obviously. Haaland takes it very well, the space behind our defence. We should have reacted a bit quicker, because if you lose the first battle against him you are done,” said Iraola, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live.

Guardiola’s plan to outnumber Bournemouth in the middle of the park squeezed the pitch and created space in wide areas for City’s full-backs. This is how O’Reilly’s goal came about, too.

With Foden pulling Bournemouth’s right-back Alex Jimenez into the middle, space opened up for O’Reilly to strike and score.

At the exact moment of the shot, the players around the Bournemouth box were Haaland, O’Reilly himself, of course, an onrushing Cherki and Matheus Nunes from full-back.

The Portuguese, combining with the experienced Bernardo Silva, did a great job of keeping Bournemouth’s danger man Antoine Semenyo quiet throughout the game, denying him space to turn and attack the City box.

One of the big talking points going into this season was about how City would go about replacing the seemingly irreplaceable Kevin De Bruyne in their attack.

With today’s performance and his ever-improving displays, it seems to be that Cherki is the answer. The Frenchman’s brace of assists mean that he’s now the only player across the top five European Leagues to provide multiple assists in different matches in 2025.

Bournemouth’s aggressive approach with their high line is there for the taking with the right creative players occupying the spaces further up the pitch. Today, it was Cherki who enjoyed a stellar game feeding chances to Haaland.

Cherki celebrates Haaland goal early

Guardiola will hope the genius Frenchman can kick on from here and continue to build a strong chemistry with the Norwegian goal machine.

After this result, City’s 100 per cent home Premier League record against the Cherries (nine wins from nine) remains intact and once again showed how Guardiola can find the right solutions even against the toughest of opposition.

That knack of finding solutions will be further tested in the coming weeks, with Borussia Dortmund coming up in the UEFA Champions League, followed by league encounters against Liverpool and Newcastle United.

As for Iraola’s Bournemouth, they will look to steel themselves and go again in another tough test at Aston Villa next weekend.