Erling Haaland has already answered Florian Wirtz and Rayan Cherki debate

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Some people think that the summer is a break for football, but those people would be wrong. Especially when there are scores to be settled over potential transfer activity.

Manchester City showed interest in Florian Wirtz as their successor to Kevin De Bruyne but have since pulled out, in part because of the enormous cost of a deal with Leverkusen and also because it is even harder for pay to sign someone when they are more interested in moving elsewhere.

If City's reasoning felt like an excuse when Liverpool emerged as frontrunner, the fact Leverkusen have held out until now for so much money is a reminder that it would have taken a British record fee to bring him to the Etihad. Lyon's Rayan Cherki, who they are expected to sign instead, could end up being close to £100m cheaper.

The market gods have teed up a scarcely believable feast for Sunday afternoon, pitting Cherki's France and Wirtz's Germany to mean that Manchester City and Liverpool fans can get a direct look at the playmaker each are targeting to be their next saviour. Over 90 minutes, both fanbases can pick apart whichever bits they want to prove indisputably that they will be getting the better deal.

Fortunately for the sanity of everyone, a similar heads-up happened with the two clubs not so long ago. In the might of the King Power Stadium in Leicester three years ago, City and Liverpool both played their shiny new strikers and there was only one winner; Darwin Nunez scored and Erling Haaland missed a sitter.

That was enough for all sorts to be said - and written - about how Liverpool had got a much better deal and maybe this chump who had scored a lot of goals in Norway and Germany would actually find it a lot tougher going in the most difficult league in the world. Silly City, silly Haaland.

It can't have taken more than a month for such snap verdicts to be confirmed as worse than the open goal Haaland had missed on his debut in English football, and the gulf with Darwin Nunez has only grown since. It turns out that one 90 minutes wasn't enough to override what months of extensive research had forecast.

The same will go for Cherki and Wirtz in Sunday's game. It's fine for fans to want to see the best in the player their club is going to sign - especially on an otherwise dead afternoon - it's just that there can't be much serious to take from it that should have any impact on either deal.

Just ask Haaland.

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