Will Erling Haaland break the Premier League scoring record?

It’s got to be a bit confusing at the moment if you’re a Manchester City fan. They won the league in 2021/22 and, in the summer, took possession of the world’s best out-and-out striker in Erling Haaland. Any way you look at it, that’s got to be seen as strengthening, but the Citizens find themselves five points behind Arsenal having played a game more as we move towards the final third of the season. They may still lift the title, but they have a job ahead of them if they’re to do it, and Arsenal are seen as odds-on favourites at most bestnongamstopcasinos sports betting sites on this season’s campaign. But Haaland has demonstrably not been a failure.

The Norwegian striker has 186 career goals, and is still some months shy of his 23rd birthday. He’s scored 25 goals in the league for City and is already over 30 total goals for the season. He has four hat-tricks in the Premier League having played just over half a season – many strikers never score one – and there’s every chance he will get better. So the first question we’ve got to ask is: will he break the Premier League scoring record.

Unless he gets injured, yes

Haaland seems to defy what sports science knows about mass and velocity. He moves with staggering pace, full stop – let alone for a big man, which he is at 6’ 5. He’s also an acrobatic striker, with the flying volley having become something of a signature move for him. The human body shouldn’t be able to cope with what he is doing, and yet he’s remained fit pretty much throughout his career including his time in Manchester. It would seem like only an injury could stop him breaking the record of 34, set by Andy Cole for Newcastle in 1993/4, and matched by Alan Shearer for Blackburn the following season. He only needs ten goals in 17 more matches, and even if his form dipped from here, that seems a certainty.

Next question: Can he hit 40?

A striker is considered to be doing their job exceptionally well if they manage 20 goals a season in the league. Players like Harry Kane traditionally exceed that and get 25 or more. Haaland scored his 20th league goal on the 28th of December – and that’s in a season where five weeks of action were held off for the World Cup. We’re realistically looking at a scenario in which the Molde youth product could notch 40 goals with some room to spare – a better output than Arsenal’s top four scorers if everyone maintains their current scoring rate.

Will he outscore an entire team?

At the present time, Everton have scored 16 goals in the league, putting them nine behind Haaland. The Toffees recently sacked Frank Lampard and replaced him with Sean Dyche, who got an immediate improvement out of the players at his disposal – but they’ll be hard-pushed to catch Haaland. Even if they do, there are at present another six teams who have hit the net less often than the Scandinavian prodigy. Aston Villa have scored as many as he has. It’s not out of the question that with another purple patch between now and the end of the season, Haaland could potentially notch up fifty goals in the league alone.