Better without their Viking Invader?

No one is saying that now.

Erling Haaland has not just improved Manchester City, he’s turned them into the most feared team in Europe.

The jigsaw has been completed and the giant Norwegian is the final crowning piece.

His 45th goal of the season was a simple volley from close range but it reverberated around a continent.

It did not just ensure that City have one foot in the Champions League semi-finals, but left Bayern Munich wondering what had hit them.

They’d conceded three at the business end of club football’s premier competition.

This was a side that had kept clean sheets against Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain earlier in the competition.

Now they need to find four goals at the Allianz Arena next week to stay in it.

Against the old City, it might have been doable, but this is a different animal.

Haaland naturally grabbed the headlines but what of the other pieces?

Bernardo Silva, whose industry and jinking skill is making fans forget his legendary namesake.

Rodri, who’s doing the same with the ‘irreplaceable’ Fernandinho.

John Stones, who’s morphing into a midfielder, has never played better.

Jack Grealish, who is now justifying his £100m fee.

And Kevin de Bruyne, who is still the most complete creative midfielder in the game.

But, even above all these stars, what of the mastermind who put it altogether?

There are still curmudgeons who say Pep Guardiola can only do it with big-money buys.

Yes, all the above plus Ruben Dias, Nathan Ake and Riyad Mahrez cost a tidy sum.

But each one of them is a better player now than he was when he joined.

Ake, a bit-part utility defender, is now a fully-minted first team defender with great athleticism and skill on the ball.

Grealish was considered overpriced but not anymore. No one is better at keeping the ball – a quality close to Pep’s football heart.

But he also tracks back and presses, something never thought to be in his DNA.

And the way Pep is using Stones makes you think he would know what to do with Trent Alexander-Arnold.

On the day of the Bayern game, an in-depth article about Pep carried admissions that some of his former players (not just at City) didn’t always understand what he was telling them to do.

The instructions came in torrents and could be bewildering, especially for new signings.

But this season, after a sluggish start, it now looks as if they’re all on his wavelength.

And not least among those he’s improved is Haaland himself.

He looks more of a team player than at Borussia Dortmund, creates space for others and even gets the odd assist.

At long last, Pep has the kind of No 9 that had eluded him for a decade and a half.

At its absolute peak, his previous great side, the Barcelona of 2009-11, didn’t have one at all.

In fact, it was partly because of that missing piece that he moved the young Lionel Messi, initially lost on the wing, inside with licence to roam.

It was the making of the immortal player he became. Pep knows what he’s doing.

And he’s got the timing right again.

City clicked just before the international break with 13 goals in two games, Haaland bagging eight of them, including five against RB Leipzig in the Champions League.

After missing a couple of games with injury he’s come back for the run in with a bang.

What we saw in the Manchester rain sent shivers from Munich to Milan to Madrid.

Not to mention one corner of north London: Arsenal can already feel City’s breath on their neck.

No more wobbles and no more death by 1,000 passes. The new City is more direct, more incisive.

Yet to think early this season, some good judges were saying that the City machine wasn’t purring quite as smoothly as before.

Haaland’s arrival had upset the system, they claimed.

They used to score a century of goals almost every season without him, after all.

Nit-pickers even suggested he wasn’t great in the air, couldn’t use his right foot and had a first touch some way short of Velcro.

They’re correct in claiming he’s not great in any of those areas, but where he’s absolutely incredible is with his left foot, his pace and his power.

But best of all is his sense of anticipation, finding goals like a sniffer dog finds illegal consignments.

He’s already smashing records out of sight and there are six more weeks left in the season.

He bags more than a goal a game in both EPL and Champions League. No one has ever done that for so long.

And this week he was finally being compared to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Not in silky skills, touch or dribbling, but in sheer effectiveness.

City, who keep finding ways not to win the top club prize, will require a genius this time.

Well, of course they have one. And Pep has history in this matter.

Even in victory this week, he looked a bigger wreck than the players having probably matched their distances inside and outside his technical area.

Mentally, he looked like he’d done the equivalent of back-to-back marathons.

But City now have the bit between their teeth.

They have relegation-threatened Leicester at home next, then Bayern, then Championship hopefuls Sheffield United in the FA Cup semi-final before Arsenal come to the Etihad.

That has long been seen as the decisive game, the do or die title decider.

But City have the FA Cup and Champions League on the agenda too.

Last season was all about Liverpool’s pursuit of the Quad: this time it’s City who must now be in with a realistic chance of emulating Manchester United’s treble.

And if they do it, it will be down to their master coach as much as their once-in-a-generation striker.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.