During Pep Guardiola’s tenure, Manchester City has had a good number of unbeaten months, but few have been as convincing as March.
The break for foreign travel Despite March’s slow beginning, its first four games produced four victories, four clean sheets, and 16 goals. In order to keep the pressure on league leaders Arsenal, City opened the month with a dominant 2-0 victory over Newcastle at home and then battled to a 1-0 victory at Crystal Palace.
Erling Haaland’s penalty, the first of five for the Norwegian and seven for City on the night ended league play after just 22 minutes, with the second leg of their Champions League last-16 match against RB Leipzig still up in the air. The following night, Guardiola’s team stunned Leipzig with a brilliant second-half performance, setting up a quarterfinal matchup with Bayern Munich.
Due to Vincent Kompany’s return to the Etihad and his team’s form, City’s FA Cup match against Burnley at the end of March had the potential to be difficult. However, for the Clarets, Haaland had other ideas as the 22-year-old scored three more goals in addition to Julian Alvarez’s two and Cole Palmer’s one in a merciless 6-0 thrashing.
Haaland had an exceptional month even by his standards, scoring nine goals in four games, and he easily won the MEN’s Manchester City Player of the Month title for March after receiving 64.8% (252) of the 389 total votes cast.
With those goals, Haaland has 42 goals this season across all competitions, surpassing the one-goal-per-game mark to move up to 1.14. With five goals against Leipzig, he tied the record of five goals in a Champions League game set by Lionel Messi and Luiz Adriano. Had he not exited the game with 30 minutes remaining, he might have had more.
Kevin De Bruyne, who received 20.8% of the vote, came in second place. The 31-year-old struggled in his first two games of March against Newcastle and Palace, displaying little in the way of originality as Guardiola implored him to get back to the fundamentals. Yet, he went above and above in that second-leg thumping of Leipzig, controlling play from midfield before curling in a fantastic goal of his own for goal number seven.
The Belgian started the FA Cup match against this former captain’s Burnley team, and his talent was on full display. He provided two exquisite passes that helped Alvarez score both of his goals.
Ilkay Gundogan, last but not least, came in third with 14.4% (56) of the vote. Prior to scoring his fifth goal of the year in the victory over Leipzig, City’s club captain guided his team through two challenging league matches to start the month. After Jack Grealish’s cut-back, the captain arrowed home a precise finish from just inside the box.
Guardiola would consider March a pivotal month if City goes on to win the Premier League or the Champions League at the end of the season. Four clean sheets demonstrated complete dominance throughout, with Haaland effectively silencing the few remaining skeptics.