If one has the resources to sign a footballer who is as effective as Erling Haaland for a decade, then there will always be strong arguments to do so – whatever choppy waters Manchester City might face in their immediate future.

Are City re-arming before a possible transfer embargo, as a result of their 100-plus Premier League charges? Was Haaland’s long-term future a condition for Pep Guardiola extending his stay at the club? Is it simply the case that the declining financial fortunes of the two great Spanish superpowers means that Haaland recognised he would never be able to earn the salary that is available from one of the Premier League’s wealthiest clubs?

Difficult to assess with any great certainty. Fundamentally, for the player, this is trailed as the most lucrative deal in professional football. And for the club it puts them in control of the long-term future – and peak years – of their chief asset.

At 24, Haaland is a unique player – and in such a world of such vicissitudes, one that City would wish to secure. He is not necessarily among the most all-round accomplished footballers to have played the game, but he is surely the most effective in this post-Messi, post-Ronaldo era when it comes to scoring goals. The question that all forward planners must ask is: what would it cost to replace him? Enough that City have made in him the biggest investment in any player in terms of the totality of this deal.

Haaland is on course to be the most prolific Premier League goalscorer of all time. Whether he surpasses the true all-time great, Jimmy Greaves, with 357 top-flight league goals between 1957 and 1971 is another thing. Greaves spent one season at AC Milan. Haaland spent four years in Norway, Austria and Germany. He is already the Premier League era’s most reliable goals-to-games ratio merchant. His 0.9 rate even surpasses the great interwar-years goalscorer Dixie Dean, who struck at a rate of 0.86 a game.

In the modern era he is some distance ahead of Thierry Henry, his nearest Premier League contender, on 0.68. Footnote: Henry played 258 games in the Premier League, and Haaland is yet to reach his 100th. There are caveats as to the general success of the team, but for a goalscorer anything over 0.6 is a fabulous return. Mohamed Salah is on 0.64 for his Liverpool career. Sergio Agüero finished at City on 0.67. The all-time leading Premier League goalscorer Alan Shearer finished on 0.59, excluding his First Division goals at Southampton.

By signing Haaland until up to his 34th birthday, City avoid the challenge of having to find another Haaland in the interim – or at least for another seven years. They cannot be leveraged into giving him a deal on an even bigger scale later in his career. They cannot lose Haaland for nothing as Liverpool are currently contemplating with Trent Alexander-Arnold or Chelsea did with Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rüdiger. They are avoiding the awkward end of career contract-extension discussion that Liverpool currently face with Salah. But in return they are committing wholeheartedly to his long-term success.

That too comes with risk. City see Haaland as a clean-living teetotal athlete who presents no obvious reasons for concern when it comes to longevity. It will end the poker game the club might have been obliged to play as his previous contract ticked down to two years this summer. There is no obvious upside for City with financial controls – profit and sustainability rules [PSR] – given the player’s fee in 2022 of £51 million is not so great as to require long-term amortisation in their results. The club has a strong PSR position notwithstanding what might be coming in its legal battle with the Premier League, and the transfer spending it now seems to be embarking upon.

They can also be sure that the Premier League and Uefa broadcast deals will continue to rise – with Fifa now also on the scene for club competitions. Whether Haaland has a deal that rises in line with broadcast rights is not a detail that the club would be prepared to disclose.

There are some similarities to Chelsea and their policy of longer player contracts, most notably the two contracts the club has given to Cole Palmer, the second of which runs to 2033. Palmer’s deal, by virtue of his age, is likely to be more incentivised. Many of Chelsea’s long-term contract signings are a way of amortising transfer spend for PSR.

For City, Haaland represents something different. They are sure that he is capable of delivering for the long term. Only a few players, of the right age-profile and with the same kind of record returns on the pitch, would be able to command such a deal. Short fixed-term contracts exist for a reason in the game. Players were historically short-term, high-value investments who, it was assumed, required the necessary motivation. That has shifted now for a handful of golden individuals, and the rewards can be dizzying.