It’s easy to forget that 260 is an absurd number of goals for a Premier League striker to have scored. Only Alan Shearer has done it, giving goalkeepers nightmare for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United.
Manchester City marksman Erling Haaland is even more prolific and the announcement of a new City contract that will keep him at the Etihad Stadium for another decade has put the Premier League record firmly in his sights.
Harry Kane is second in the Premier League scorer ranks but is 47 goals shy of the record and now plays outside the Premier League. Mohamed Salah is the only other active player in the top ten. The 32-year-old is 85 goals behind Shearer and the possibility of his departure from Liverpool remains.
Erling Haaland’s Project 261
Haaland is a different story. If his phenomenal scoring rate were to continue, he’d be expected to blow right past Shearer’s record long before the end of his new Man City deal.
Shearer scored 260 times in 441 Premier League games over 14 seasons. Haaland currently has 79 goals from 87 games in 2.5 seasons, a rate of 0.9 goals per game. At an average of 34.8 appearances per season, that’s 31.3 goals per season in his City career to date.
Haaland will slow down. Surely Haaland will slow down. His scoring rate in the Premier League so far would see him reach the end of the 2033/34 season on a frankly ridiculous 375 goals.
With a ratio of 0.9 goals per game, the 24-year-old Norwegian might reasonably be expected to beat Shearer’s record in the early part of the 2030/31 season. That’s even if he missed matches at the current rate too. Not bad.
City manager Pep Guardiola believes that the length of Haaland’s new deal, itself a Premier League record, demonstrates that the player trusts the club with his future.
“When one player decides to sign this type of contract, it is because he wants to show how desperate he is to be here,” said Guardiola.
“He settled perfectly,” continued the manager. “He loves the club and the people he’s around. He loves the Premier League. He is here with his wife and his father and has decided there is no better place to be in the next 10 years.”
Only Salah has scored more Premier League goals than Haaland this season, even as City have struggled to find their usual form.
If they’re in need of a boost, they don’t get bigger than this.
I interviewed Trent Alexander-Arnold last year and he may have inadvertently revealed that his future lies away from Liverpool
‘Scoring five goals in nine minutes is an epic thing. Someone cleared another chance off the line and I was a bit angry afterwards – I could have had six!’: Robert Lewandowski bemoans failing to hit double hat-trick while at Bayern Munich
