Erling Haaland became public enemy no.1 in the Arsenal fanbase after his antics in Manchester City’s recent 2-2 draw against the Gunners in the Premier League.
He finally broke his jinx against the London side by scoring the first goal, but it was his antics towards the end of the match that really fire among the supporters.
Haaland tried to be a bully towards the Arsenal players in the final stages.
He threw the football at Gabriel Magalhaes’ face after John Stones’ late equalizer and then also squared up to young midfielder Myles Lewis-Skelly.
Not just that, but Haaland even got in a tussle with Gabriel Jesus in which he seemingly called him a ‘f—– clown’.
But the Norwegian forward’s actions that infuriated Arsenal fans the most was how he behaved with manager Mikel Arteta.
The cameras caught him saying ‘Stay Humble eh?’ to the Spaniard after the draw, which then sparked his furious interaction with Jesus – who was trying to defend his manager.
Arsenal fans have been praying for the Manchester City forward’s downfall ever since that interaction and some fans have seemingly gone too far with their criticism of the forward.
Not satisfied by criticizing or abusing him on X (Twitter), some Gooners decided to hurl direct insults at Haaland on his Instagram account.
The Norwegian forward, who has 39 million followers on Instagram, doesn’t really post that much on the platform.
In fact, the most-recent post happened a week or so before the game between Arsenal and Manchester City.
This was a poignant post in which Haaland paid an emotional tribute to a close family friend named Ivar Eggja, who passed away at the age of 59 recently.
Eggja was the best man at Alfe-Inge Haaland’s wedding and a close friend of Erling’s father.
The Manchester City striker used to fondly call him ‘uncle’, with Eggja even considered a representative for the family as he helped them make crucial decisions when it comes to sponsorship agreements and related things.
With this post being the most recent one posted by Haaland on his Instagram, some Arsenal fans decided to target it and takes jibes at him.
A lot of supporters wrote ‘Stay humble eh’ to mock the Norwegian forward in his time of distress and trying to mock him for failing to score in Manchester City’s 1-1 draw against Newcastle United recently.
One fan warned Haaland to ‘never touch our players again’ and another one directly commented ‘Glad your pops got a career ending injury. Yours will come soon’, with these comments getting many likes from other fellow Arsenal supporters.
There are hundreds of similar disrespectful, threatening comments made on that post – with most fans not even realizing that they’re indirectly disrespecting a dead person for whom Haaland created this tribute for.
To his credit, Haaland has not allowed this to phase him at all. He scored in Manchester City’s recent 4-0 win over Slovan Bratislava in the UEFA Champions League.
He still looks to have his goal-scoring groove in tact after blanking against Newcastle and will look to silence the Arsenal fans by keeping on scoring more goals in the Premier League and building on the 10 goals scored already after just six games.