Burnley players captained unstoppable Erling Haaland on fantasy football ahead of Man City clash

Burnley stars appeared to have accepted the inevitability of Erling Haaland scoring against them for Manchester City on Friday night even before kick-off.

The action-packed Premier League curtain-raiser saw Pep Guardiola's side run out 3-0 winners as Haaland bagged a brace but there were positives for Burnley to take with a noble performance against the Champions.

It took only four minutes for last season's top scorer to find the back of the net once again and the Norwegian added a second shortly before half-time.

The talismanic 23-year-old broke all sorts of records as Manchester City completed the treble last year with his 36 league goals - the most scored by any player in a single Premier League season.

After Haaland's past 12 months, Burnley's newly promoted defence no doubt wouldn't have been all too excited about the prospect of facing an all-firing Manchester City side on the opening day. Indeed, a handful of players appeared to accept that Haaland might breach the Clarets' defence.

A number of the Burnley squad have submitted sides to compete in Fantasy Premier League this season, as has been uncovered by FPL Focal.

All eight Burnley players listed as having fantasy football teams on the site owned Haaland for the opening fixture, despite the star playing their own side - with centre-back Dara O'Shea the only one to bench the striker.

Josh Brownhill, Lawrence Vigouroux and Jack Cork all captained Haaland and collected double points for his brace, while Charlie Taylor, Louis Beyer, Hjalmar Ekdal and Zeki Amdouni all started the forward but didn't give him the armband.

It was an eventful evening for Haaland who got an earful from Guardiola at half-time about his performance, despite grabbing two goals in the opening 45 minutes.

Explaining that fall-out after the game, Guardiola said: "He wants all the time, ball to him, ball to him. Man-to-man it's one-v-one, give him balls in behind and he'll do it.

"But when you have two minutes left and Kovacic goes in behind and loses the ball, Rodri loses the ball. Erling wanted the ball and Bernardo was correct not to give him it.

"It’s easy to do exactly what you have to do, it’s not any problem at all but he scored two goals and I think he's happy."