Man City 1 Everton 1: Defending champions drop more points as Haaland fluffs his lines from penalty spot with shocker
ERLING HAALAND fluffed the chance to lift the gloom over Manchester City.
The Norwegian forward saw his second-half penalty saved by Jordan Pickford – meaning the fallen champs dropped yet more points.
Pep Guardiola’s men have now won just one of their last 13 games in all competitions and even their normally deadly striker is misfiring.
The Etihad chief had ordered his players to spend Christmas night at the City Football Academy after training in a bid to halt the slide.
But there was more bad news ahead of kick-off with England pair Kyle Walker and Jack Grealish ruled out.
Even so, it looked like Pep’s decision was the wake up call his players needed after a disastrous couple of months.
They began in confident fashion with Phil Foden’s cross headed against the post by Josko Gvaradiol early on.
Inside the first quarter hour, they were ahead as Bernardo Silva latched onto a pass from Jeremy Doku and squeezed his shot over Pickford – via a deflection off Jarrad Branthwaite.
Everton have kept clean sheets against Arsenal and Chelsea in recent weeks – but even in their current form City were finding ways through.
Silva wasted a golden chance to make it two as he screwed a shot wide after great build up play from Foden and Haaland.
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And they were made to pay moments later as Manuel Akanji made a hash of clearing Abdoulaye Doucoure’s shot.
It fell to Iliman Ndiaye at the back post and the Senegalese took a shot before steering a rising shot pas Stefan Ortega and into the corner.
The confidence which was coming back to City suddenly drained out of them and they looked anxious in the remainder of the first half.
After the break they were on the front foot again with Mateo Kovacic volleying wide and Savinho also going close.
The Brazilian winger won his team a penalty when he went down under a challenge from Vitaliy Mykolenko soon afterwards.
It was a clear penalty but maybe the delay which followed unsettled Haaland as his penalty was tame and comfortably saved by Pickford.
Even though the Norwegian headed in the rebound, he was flagged offside – and a golden chance had been wasted.
Haaland has been suffering along with his team-mates in recent weeks – and has just four goals in the last dozen games. A real drought by his standards.
City were jittery again and breathed a sigh of relief when Doucoure’s goalbound effort was deflected past his own post by Rico Lewis.
In the final few minutes Orel Mangala’s shot took a nick off Akanji and dropped just wide of the post – the way things have been going it would have been no surprise if it had dropped in.