Erling Haaland vows to ‘stay humble’ after scoring winner vs Arsenal to blow title race wide open

Last Updated on 19 April 2026

Erling Haaland scored the winner as Manchester City beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Etihad on Sunday, cutting the gap to just three points with a game in hand.

It was a performance that oozed quality, with Rayan Cherki’s opener and Bernardo Silva pulling the strings all afternoon before Haaland settled it with his clinical finish just past the hour.

For Arsenal, who had led through a Gianluigi Donnarumma howler, it was a second straight defeat and a serious dent in their title dream. For Manchester City, it was a statement, and for Erling Haaland, it was personal.

“Stay humble, eh?” The Erling Haaland jibe that keeps coming back

The phrase has taken on a life of its own in this rivalry. Back in September 2024, after City snatched a dramatic 2-2 draw at the Etihad, Haaland tapped Arteta on the shoulder at full-time and told him to “stay humble” as per ESPN.

Arsenal got their revenge emphatically, thrashing City 5-1 at the Emirates in February 2025, with Myles Lewis-Skelly mimicking Haaland’s own Zen celebration as a direct dig. But Haaland has a long memory, and Sunday’s winner gave him the perfect stage to revisit it.

Asked about City’s Premier League title chances post-match, he kept it typically deadpan: “We need to stay humble. Don’t think too much. Burnley next…” The delivery was measured, the message was not.

Whether deliberate or not, using that exact phrase after scoring the winner against Arsenal, with the title race now in City’s hands, is the kind of thing that will follow this rivalry for years.

Nico O’Reilly, Bernardo Silva, and the City that means business

If there were any doubts City had the quality to reel Arsenal in, Sunday put them to bed.

Rayan Cherki has been one of the signings of the season and was irrepressible, opening the scoring with a moment of magic before Donnarumma’s calamitous error handed Arsenal an unlikely equaliser off Havertz’s boot. City refused to panic.

Nico O’Reilly was commanding all afternoon, while Bernardo Silva, as he so often does in these kinds of games, dictated the tempo with that effortless blend of pressure and precision that has defined City’s title chases across the decade.

Haaland pounced after 65 minutes, and it felt inevitable. City, again, are right where they want to be. Their Premier League destiny is back firmly in their own hands, with six games left. And when Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City get going in the run-in, they are very hard to stop.