How Many Goals Can Erling Haaland Score This EPL Season?
Posted on: October 11, 2022, 10:09h.
Last updated on: October 11, 2022, 04:19h.
How many goals can Erling Haaland, Manchester City’s giant Norwegian beast of a striker, score this season?
Haaland has been so prolific for City since his €60 million (US$58 million) move from Dortmund over the summer that people are calling him a “cheat code.”
Athletic, fast, and powerful, with impeccable close-range positioning, insane ball-striking skills, and towering aerial ability, Haaland is a freak of nature and the ultimate goal-scoring machine.
Nine games into a 38-game season, and the 22-year-old has already netted 15 times in the league. He’s also scored five times in the Champions League.
“Haaland is like Inspector Gadget. He presses a button in his body and his leg comes out from nowhere,” exclaimed UK TV soccer pundit Ally McCoist after the Norwegian scored a hattrick against Manchester United.
Records There to Be Broken
Haaland is clearly enjoying life at City, whose midfield maestros are adept at conjuring up a regular stream of chances for him to belt into the back of the net. But how far can he go? Can he beat the current record for goals in an EPL season, 34, currently held jointly by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole?
It’s an emphatic yes.
Haaland’s 15 league goals so far equate to an average 1.67 goals per game. Keep that up and he’ll score a mind-blowing 63 for the season.
But surely this rate can’t be sustainable. Fatigue over the course of a long season will take its toll, and an injury is likely at some point. In his last season for Dortmund, Haaland was injured three times, missing a total of 16 games. The season before, he missed ten.
Notably, he tends to pick up muscular injuries, the kind that can reoccur.
Magic Boots
But a factor in his favor is that Norway has failed to qualify for the World Cup, which this year will take place November and December in Qatar, meaning Haaland will get a restful winter break.
Bookies believe Haaland is just under even money to hit 40 goals, while 50 remains an outside possibility. Betfair currently has 40 goals at 5/4 and 50 at 7/1.
Fifty would be an extraordinary feat, placing him on a par with GOAT candidate Lionel Messi, who tallied exactly that in La Liga’s 2011/12 season.
Stay fit for the whole season and who knows? Haaland may even get 60 to equal the all-time record scorer in England football history, Everton’s Dixie Dean. ‘
Dean grabbed his 60 goals in the 1927-28 season of the old First Division (over 42 matches). No one has come close for the best part of 100 years. At last, we have a contender.