The 25-year-old Norwegian has not played since December 6 against Aston Villa. A foot injury has kept the top scorer away from football.
Haaland started the Premier League match on the bench and it wasn’t until well into the second half that he started to warm up. And to great cheers in the Etihad Stadium, he came on in the 71st minute. He replaced Kevin De Bruyne, who recently made a comeback from his long-term injury.
There was no 15th league goal for Haaland, who tops the scoring league in the Premier League. Timing wasn’t quite back to top level. At one point he was stopped quite easily by Burnley centre-back Hjalmar Ekdal.
Julian Alvarez was City’s hero of the match by making it both 1–0 and 2–0 in the first half, the first goal a header from a cross from Matheus Nunes.
The second came after a free kick when Kevin de Bruyne, starting player for the first time since August, hit the free kick deep to Alvarez who only had to put the ball into the goal.
Rodri then scored 3–0.
Burnley reduced in additional time.
The victory was Manchester City’s eighth in a row and they remain in second place behind Liverpool.
A Liverpool that later in the evening defeated Chelsea 4-1 after goals from Diogo Jota, Conor Bradley, Dominik Szoboszlai and Luis Diaz. Christopher Nkunku scored Chelsea’s consolation goal.
Dejan Kulusevskis Tottenham trailed 0–1 against Brentford at half-time. But then only needed a few minutes to turn around to make it 2-1 after the break.
Destiny Udogie scored the equalizer in the 48th minute and substitute Brennan Johnson scored the lead a minute later on his first contact of the game.
And seven minutes later Richarlison made it 3-1. Ivan Toney reduced it to 3–2.
