Erling Haaland’s scoring rate this season could shatter records

Manchester City’s Erling Haaland has put together an impressive scoring rate since the start of the season. He’s on pace to obliterate records should the striker’s goal pace continue. 

Soccer may be a game where goals are rare, but not when striker Erling Haaland takes the field.

The Norway international, who joined Premier League giants Manchester City this past summer, had gotten off on an impressive start, scoring goals at an astonishing rate over the past two months.

Haaland has played in just eight league matches, but he’s already tallied 14 goals. That’s a rate of 1.75 goals per game.

Over that span of Premier League matches, Haaland has recorded three hat tricks. In doing so, he became the fastest player ever to achieve that feat in 30-year history of the Premier League. Michael Owen previously held the record, taking him 48 games to do so.

Erling Haaland could shatter records at Manchester City

Should the 22-year-old Haaland maintain this blistering pace over a 38-game season, he could shatter records over the next seven months. Liverpool’s Mo Salah scored 32 goals in the 2017-18 campaign, the record since the league went to 20 teams. Haaland could beat that feat in just 20 matches at this current pace.

London’s Daily Mail reported that Haaland’s “current rate of 1.75 goals per game, Salah’s tally could be gone by the time the defending champions travel to Manchester United on Jan. 14.”

No one has yet outpaced Andy Cole and Alan Shearer, who both netted 34 goals in the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons, respectively. Those records, however, were set when Premier League teams played 42 games in a season.

The highest scoring season by a Man City player goes all the way back to 1928-29 when Tommy Johnson scored 38 times. More recently, Sergio Aguero holds the club record in the Premier League era, netting 33 goals across all competitions.

Across all competitions so far this season, Haaland scored 19 goals in 10 matches, including two in the Champions League.

Since Norway did not qualify for the World Cup (which starts on Nov. 20), Haaland will get a month-long rest while the planet’s best teams and players battle it out in Qatar. This break could further benefit Haaland as leagues across Europe, including the Premier League, suspend all club competitions.

Over the long term, Haaland could threaten Shearer’s all-time Premier League career scoring record of 260 goals. It took the former England international 14 years, and 441 games, to reach that total.  Should Haaland continue to give goalkeepers and defenders fits as he has at the current pace, the record could be matched in 141 games.

Many have also pointed out that Haaland’s pace is much better than what Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, considered the world’s best players, did by age 22.

Indeed, Haaland’s scoring rate has fans pulling out calculators and looking up records to figure out what he can do.

Haaland has made Man City, a club already stacked with talent, a contender to win both the Premier League and make a serious challenge for their first Champions League crown.

It will be a fun ride, especially if Haaland continues to score an avalanche of goals, and break records, this season.