Erling Haaland fires Man City five-word instruction as Liverpool given huge title race boost

Erling Haaland has broken his silence after Manchester City's shock 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth. Andoni Iraola's players edged the Premier League champions at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday afternoon, gifting Liverpool a notable boost in the early Premier League title race.

Antoine Semenyo fired the Cherries in front inside the opening minutes before Evanilson etched his name on to the scoresheet on the hour-mark. Josko Gvardiol pulled one back for City in the final moments, but Bournemouth weathered that storm on the south coast.

With Liverpool claiming three points from Brighton, Pep Guardiola's side have surrendered a two-point deficit in the title race. After the game, Haaland posted to his Instagram story to vent his frustration.

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"Head down, back to work," wrote the 24-year-old goal machine, captioning a picture of himself from that match. Gvardiol also uploaded to his Instagram story, reposting a moment he shared with Tyler Adams, who he called his 'brate' - which means 'brother' in Croatian.

The duo shared the pitch 30 times for RB Leipzig during the 2021/2022 season, placing fourth in the Bundesliga, reaching the Europa League semi-final and winning the DFB-Pokal. Nevertheless, speaking to reporters after the Bournemouth game, Guardiola claimed his players weren't as sharp as the Cherries.

"We couldn't match up to the intensity," said the Catalan. "All of the situations with the long balls, we couldn't win it. And when you don't win these types of balls to Semenyo, and others, our central defenders and strikers have to defend deeper.

"We struggled to make our [mark on the game], but especially for that. In the game, for many reasons, they were higher than us. We have players with rhythm and some other players have a lack of rhythm because we could not train due to injuries. But we knew it."

Guardiola went on: "It is what it is. We have few players with a lot of minutes and a lot of players with no minutes, so the balance is a bit uncomfortable. We played good against Spurs, but today [on Saturday] we could not handle their intensity that they had and that's why we lost the game."