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Man of the weekend in the Premier League? It is not in doubt. Erling Haaland deserves the acclaim and not only because he scored the winner for Manchester City in the top-of-the-table showdown against Arsenal – his 23rd goal of the season in the competition and 34th for City overall. Another Golden Boot is within reach; Haaland’s only rival is Brentford’s Igor Thiago, who has 21. Another league title is also there for the taking.

Yet Haaland trumped it all with something he did not do at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday. It was an old-school battle between him and the Arsenal centre-half Gabriel Magalhães; a wrestling match at times, so much pushing and pulling, all about the upper body strength. There was always the potential for it to bubble over and that is what happened in the 84th minute.

Haaland started it with a shove on Gabriel after they had tangled for the umpeenth time and then there they were, going forehead-to-forehead, trying to out-alpha each other. Which was when Gabriel made a sudden movement forward with his head.

It would be wrong to call it a head-butt. That kind of move involves an initial snap back of the neck. It was more of a head-push. But we have seen this movie before and it almost always involves the player on the receiving end going to ground and writhing about in agony. And the aggressor being sent off.

A heat-butt hurts and disorientates. A head-push does not. And so to go down after the latter is simply to cheat. Haaland stood his ground. He set an example. Had he crumpled, he stood to gain plenty. Arsenal would have been down to 10 for the closing stages and with one of their star defenders staring at a three-match ban. Everybody would have shrugged. Gabriel deserved to go. He lost his head. It is nobody’s fault but his own.

Haaland did not want to win like this. He is no choirboy but he knows where the lines must be drawn. Gabriel got away with a booking and Haaland received one, too, for his part in the fracas. There was a yellow card, as well, for Pep Guardiola; the City manager had furiously demanded a red for Gabriel. What Haaland really got from the episode was honour and respect.

“If I go down, it’s a red card … like any other guy would do,” Haaland said. “I will never do this. My father taught me this – stay on your feet and don’t be a … I won’t say the word but it starts with ‘P’. Maybe yes I should have gone down. Maybe it would be easier but I didn’t. And I got a yellow card for it!”

Haaland laughed at that last bit and with him, there is often a playfulness that accompanies the ferocity with which he competes. It was there when he considered the scratches and bruises from his duel with Gabriel. “A lot of scratches,” he said. “Sometimes my missus is not so happy about this … it looks a bit wrong.”

And it was there when he assessed the title race. Haaland wants to focus on City and especially their next game, which is at Burnley on Wednesday night. Win that and they would move level with Arsenal. He really does not want to talk about them and yet, well, he cannot resist the odd nibble.

Arsenal had arrived on the back of their damaging home defeat against Bournemouth the previous weekend. “Of course, you watch the game against Bournemouth … the whole of England watched this game,” Haaland said.

Were City now in Arsenal’s heads? “I don’t know,” Haaland replied. “You need to ask them. The last seasons they’ve come up short.”

Haaland also dropped into the conversation how City were “calm” and “there are a few of us who have been in this situation before”. In other words, a good number who know what it takes to stay the course in a championship fight. City had a handful of players in their starting lineup who have not won a league title. They were offset by the likes of Bernardo Silva and Rodri; Haaland, too, who at 25 is one of the leaders of this team.

Arsenal’s XI at the Etihad contained two players who had previously won a league championship. Gabriel won the Croatian title with Dinamo Zagreb in 2017-18; Piero Hincapié was a Bundesliga champion with Bayer Leverkusen in 2023-24.

Arsenal have indeed come up short in the recent past; they have been the runners-up in each of the previous three seasons and what gives Haaland and City the belief is their knowhow in these situations. In stride-for-stride races for the line under Guardiola, when there has been no margin for error, they have always won – in 2018-19 and 2021-22 against Liverpool, and in 2023-24 against Arsenal.

“After West Ham [where City drew on 14 March], everybody wrote that it was over,” Haaland said. “That was the feeling. But you have to focus game by game. That’s the reality of this club in this title race because the last weeks are when things get decided.”