Erling Haaland at Man City: ‘The Stats Speak for Themselves’

That’s two hat-tricks in three games to start the 2024-25 Premier League season for Erling Haaland; the Manchester City striker continues to redefine what it means to be a great goalscorer.

Scoring goals is supposed to be the hardest thing in football. Yet, Erling Haaland continues to make it look second nature, you might even say bordering on effortless if he didn’t frequently kick the ball really, really hard.

We’re only three games into the 2024-25 Premier League season, and the Norwegian striker already has seven goals and two hat-tricks to his name.

Having scored three times in the 4-1 Matchday 2 hammering of Ipswich Town, Haaland repeated the feat on Saturday as Manchester City beat West Ham 3-1 at the London Stadium, showing his quality with three distinctly different goals.

That made him the first player to score as many as two hat-tricks in a team’s first three matches in an English Football League season since…

*Go on, try and guess this one*

… Bradford City’s Paul Jewell in 1994-95’s Division Two.

Those efforts took him to an overall Premier League tally of 70 goals in 69 games – that’s Haaland, not Jewell – a strike rate that we just haven’t seen before in the competition over such a prolonged period.

Haaland’s ability in front of goal might not be anything new to us now, but it’s still hard to comprehend quite how deadly he is when you consider his achievements in a historical context. It feels like he’s re-writing what it means to be a great Premier League goalscorer, because his output is so far beyond anything that’s come before – even from Paul Jewell…

The BBC’s Match of the Day caused a little stir last week when they showed a table of the players with the most hat-tricks in Premier League history; it was relevant again this weekend, only the Opta data in the table looked even more startling.

Haaland is now on eight hat-tricks in 69 Premier League matches. So, he’s averaging one every 8.6 games, which is far and away the best such record in the competition’s history; the next best is one every 16 games, but that’s just because former Bolton striker Fredi Bobic only played 16 times in the competition. His sole hat-trick was one of just four goals he scored.

Among the players to score at least five hat-tricks in the Premier League, Luis Suárez boasts the next best frequency, with his six trebles in 110 matches seeing him get a hat-trick every 18.3 matches on average; Sergio Agüero is next, with his 12 in 275 games giving him an average of one every 22.9 games.

It shouldn’t be overlooked how incredible those respective figures for Suárez and Agüero are. For example, Thierry Henry scored his hat-tricks at an average rate of one every 32.3 games, Ruud van Nistelrooy’s was one in 30 matches; Alan Shearer, the Premier League’s record goalscorer, averaged a hat-trick every 40.1 matches.

We half joked recently that Haaland might be aiming to break Agüero’s all-time record of 12 hat-tricks this season – two in three’s a pretty good start. Even if he doesn’t get another four in 2024-25, it’s only a matter of time before he surpasses Agüero.

What makes Haaland’s unrelenting goalscoring even more interesting is that he’s come through in an era where pure penalty box strikers like his kind are verging on a dying breed; the more common modern interpretations of the number 9 often tend to either be a kind of 9/10 hybrid like Harry Kane, or a wide forward in the mould of Kylian Mbappé.

Of course, it’s not an exact science, however, Haaland feels like more of a throwback. Would he be allowed to have such a singular focus if he wasn’t such a good finisher? Perhaps not, but maybe that’s the point. He’s such a good finisher that he defies convention.

So while other centre-forwards might like to see plenty of the ball, Haaland’s arguably more threatening the fewer touches he has.

Across his Premier League career, he’s averaged a goal every 22.7 touches; going back to the start of the 2006-07 season, that is comfortably the fewest touches per goal by any player (min. two goals scored). In fact, it’s nearly half of the 39.7 touches per goal registered by Adam Le Fondre, while Aston Villa’s Jhon Durán (47.9) and Alexander Isak (48.2) are next in the rankings.

Similarly, when it comes to pure goalscoring frequency, Haaland is once again in a league of his own. His goals have come at a rate of one every 80 minutes; next best (minimum 20 goals) is Agüero (108 minutes).

And unsurprisingly, he’s clear when it comes to shot conversion. Since joining City, 27.1% of his Premier League shots have been goals – among players to score at least 25 times in the competition since August 2004, he’s almost three full percentage points better off than anyone else, with Isak (23.4%) his closest challenger and Javier Hernández (22.5%) after that.

Haaland’s incredible start to the season led to Kevin De Bruyne being asked in the mixed zone on Saturday whether the Norwegian is the best striker he’s played with.

“It’s a hard question. In the box, I’d say yes. All around, maybe Kun [Sergio Agüero], but it depends on what you talk about. Erling is the most prolific striker I’ve played with. I’ve played with really good strikers like Kun, Samuel Eto’o, Fernando Torres; there’s some good guys. It’s hard to compare but the stats speak for themselves.”

They certainly do, and assuming he manages to stay fit and free of serious injuries, there’s probably not a single goalscoring record that’s beyond him. He’s already scored more in a single season than anyone else and reached 50 Premier League goals quicker than anyone before; he’ll likely get to 100 in record speed, and while it’s still a fair way off, he’s on track to obliterate Shearer’s all-time goals record of 260.

Granted, that record has stood for a long time for a reason, but in terms of sheer goalscoring prowess over a considerable stretch of time, Haaland clearly has the ability to go beyond Shearer – it’s whether he stays in England long enough or avoids injuries that’ll determine whether he breaks the record or not.

Either way, this iteration of Haaland is the best goalscorer we’ve seen in the Premier League, and his beginning to 2024-25 suggests he’s only getting better.

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