The summer transfer of Erling Haaland to Manchester City may have generated plenty of debate at the time about what this transfer would mean for the future of the Premier League and the wider football ecosystem. Would this make the Manchester club unbeatable domestically and finally take them to the European success they have coveted for so long?

In the time that Pep Guardiola has been in charge of the club, they have developed a finely-tuned, highly structured system, playing to clearly defined patterns and in a style befitting of the Catalan coach and his previous work at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Adding the giant Norwegian goal machine to this perfectly-constructed side represented something of a risk at the time; how would he adapt to their style, given his own previous form for offering relatively little in build up play and essentially being all about finding the net? In turn, how would Guardiola adjust his own, firmly-set dogmas around midfield play to accommodate the archetypal number nine, a role often eschewed by City in favour of additional midfield schemers, ignoring the obvious success of Sergio Agüero, himself a very different striker to Haaland.

With 20 goals from his first 12 games, Haaland has enjoyed a near perfect start to life in the Premier League. In addition to scoring hat-tricks in his first three home games, he seems to have struck up a fantastic relationship with City’s key man, Kevin De Bruyne, as well as assisting three goals and linking up superbly with Phil Foden.

On the surface, it should hardly be seen as a huge surprise that a man of Haaland’s ability is thriving playing for a team as strong as City, who have won four of the last five Premier League titles. However, adding a player of his profile to the team’s patterns will have been far from straightforward, so the speed at which everyone involved as hit their stride is remarkable.

By comparison, in response to Haaland’s move to Manchester, recent rivals Liverpool invested heavily in their own number nine, signing Darwin Núñez from Benfica. Since arriving, the Uruguayan has already experienced ups and downs – after scoring in the Community Shield and on his Premier League debut, he was then sent off against Crystal Palace and banned for three matches, stalling his start to the campaign.

And while he did return to the scoresheet in Sunday’s action-packed encounter with Arsenal, Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp will no doubt have been hoping for a stronger start to Núñez’s time on Merseyside.

Perhaps even more significant, however, has been the impact of the striker’s arrival on the rest of the Liverpool side, who currently sit tenth in the early Premier League table, having lost twice and drawn four times already.

At their energetic best, Klopp’s Liverpool have plundered goals from the wide players, particularly Sadio Mané, whose presence has been sorely missed since his summer move to Bayern Munich, and Mohamed Salah, who has only scored two Premier League goals so far this campaign.

Implanting Núñez into this Liverpool team seems to have had a noticeable effect on Salah’s form – this time last year, the Egyptian winger was imperious, scoring great goals and plenty of them. Drifting in from the flank to take up threatening positions in the inside forward channel or just as happy bringing the ball in from wide to create his own chances, Salah was seemingly unstoppable – at least until his domestic form took a back seat during the African Cup of Nations.

Since then, Salah has been without doubt a less potent force in Liverpool’s attack and the addition of Núñez seems only to have further blunted his threat, forcing him wider and deeper, even when Roberto Firmino or Diogo Jota have been leading the line.

Liverpool seem to have lost much of the balance and structure that has made them so effective in recent seasons, with much debate around the role of Trent Alexander-Arnold defensively, where previously the conversation was only about how superb he was as a creative force. Instead, it now seems that the Anfield side are struggling at both ends of the pitch, forcing the entire team to sit deeper and rely on moments of individual brilliance rather than the elite-level team ethic and relentless pressing that took them so far.

This is in stark contrast to City, who seem to have had no problem at all in evolving their play to thrive on the direct running and penalty box poaching of Haaland. If anything, his inclusion in the side may have created additional space between the lines for the likes of De Bruyne, Foden and Jack Grealish, who has posed more of a threat this season than during the last.

Prior to signing Haaland, City shipped out two other forwards the shape of Raheem Stirling an Gabriel Jesus, both of which may have competed with the Norwegian for space in behind opposition defences, alleviating the kind of issues that Liverpool have encountered with Núñez and Salah.

When you consider how deep most defences sit when trying to nullify City, it is even more impressive that they are able to carve their way through so effectively and regularly create the chances on which Haaland is thriving so. In fact, watching this City team in full flight is nothing short of thrilling, knowing that they can – and usually do – score at will. How long that kind of feel-good factor persists is another question, because if the Premier League is headed into Bundesliga/Ligue 1 levels of domination, it is hard to see this being enjoyable forever.

That in itself raises a series of questions about what comes next. One of the main selling points of the Premier League product (excuse the vile rhetoric), has been the unpredictable nature of the competition – the self-styled ‘best league in the world’ requires that any team can beat any other on any given day. Of course, this has rarely been actually true, hence why the title is usually claimed by one of three, at a push four, clubs, but the promise of unforeseen events is enough to feed the narrative beast.

Without the phenomenal start made by Arsenal this season, the Premier League would already look much like a case of when City would claim the title rather than if – Guardiola’s side have scored ten more goals than other side so far after just eight or nine games and no-one has conceded less. They also comfortably have both the highest expected goals for and lowest against, running teams ragged with seeming ease and providing threats from all angles.

Perhaps one element of uncertainty in this season is the unprecedented mid-season break to accommodate the winter World Cup in Qatar. It’s impossible to predict how this will affect all involved, both on an individual level and in terms of their roles within their respective teams, other than speculating that those with the biggest and deepest squads will probably deal with it most comfortably.

Alternatively, will those players not involved in the World Cup, including Salah and Haaland, suffer from having their season disrupted for a month? How will they handle returning to action and maintaining their form?

If the current form of City and their rivals continues throughout the rest of this season, neutral followers will be hoping that Arsenal can continue their imperious start to the campaign and maintain a title challenge.

Otherwise, the only topics of conversation for the rest of this season will be around the goalscoring feats of Haaland and just how many records he can break. Having already become the fastest player to reach 10 and 15 goals, he will no doubt have his sights on the Premier League records for a season – 32 in a 38 game campaign and 34 in a 42 fixture calendar. He may even be eyeing up a record that many think could stand forever: Dixie Dean’s 60-goal season in 1927-28 – on current form, Haaland is on course to score 63 times this season, although surely he cannot maintain that level of lethality.

Can he?