We started to collate the astonishing stats that made Erling Haaland’s start to life in the Premier League utterly extraordinary a while ago. He renders it woefully and embarrassingly out of date every game so let’s just keep this updated as best we can.
Bear in mind that he has done all this despite famously barely bothering to touch the ball the rest of the time.
Here are some of his Ridiculous Stats already…
* With 15 goals to his name, Haaland currently has almost twice as many as his nearest ‘challenger’ for the Golden Boot, Harry Kane having managed only a feeble eight goals in his nine games so far.
* Those 15 goals he’s plundered in his first couple of months in Our League are more than the career totals of Robinho, Kai Havertz, Luka Modric, David Platt, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Edinson Cavani, Mousa Dembele, Samuel Eto’o, Dimitri Payet, Ademola Lookman, Harry Maguire, Emmanuel Petit, Granit Xhaka, Daniel Amokachi, Joelinton, Diego Forlan, Serhiy Rebrov, Andriy Shevchenko, Ronnie Rosenthal and Timo Werner.
* Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, Brentford, Newcastle and the rest of Manchester City are the only Premier League teams currently outscoring Haaland. He trails the combined efforts of his teammates 18-15. Fourth-placed Chelsea are behind his 15 goals.
* Those goals are currently coming along at a rate of one every 50.2 minutes. If he were to continue that rate and play every remaining minute of the league season (up to you which of these currently seems less likely…) he would end the season with 68 Premier League goals.
* By scoring nine goals in his first five Premier League games, Haaland finally knocked Micky Quinn’s name out of the record books. He jointly held the previous record for most goals in his first five Premier League games with eight in the year football was invented. Sergio Aguero matched him in 2011/12.
* Haaland is already one of only six players to score back-to-back Premier League hat-tricks, but hasn’t yet matched Harry Kane in this particular field of excellence. Kane has not only done it twice, but did so in the same year (if not the same season) after scoring seven goals across the final two games of 2016/17 against Leicester and Hull before netting hat-tricks in successive games against Burnley and Southampton either side of Christmas Day seven months later. Hard as it is to credit, incidentally, that Boxing Day treble against Southampton in 2017 remains Kane’s most recent Premier League treble.
* With his third hat-trick Haaland went past the all-time Premier League totals of Gareth Bale, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Christian Benteke and Eden Hazard. He is now level with, deep breath, Cristiano Ronaldo, Romelu Lukaku, Heung-min Son, Robbie Keane, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Jamie Vardy, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Frank Lampard and Emmanuel Adebayor.
* Haaland is also level on three Premier League hat-tricks with Dion Dublin. But how many episodes of Homes Under the Hammer has Haaland presented? Exactly.
* Haaland’s three hat-tricks take Norway fifth above Spain on the list of countries to have produced the most Premier League trebles with 13, Haaland standing on the shoulders of such giants as Solskjaer, Steffen Iversen and Joshua King (two each), John Carew, Tore Andre Flo and Jan Age Fjortoft (one). Argentina and Holland are joint-second with 18, which frankly shouldn’t take too long to topple, but even Haaland will have to hang around a few years to knock England’s 161 hat-tricks off top spot.
* Haaland is the first player in the Premier League to score hat-tricks in three successive home games, and the first Manchester City player to score a Manchester derby hat-trick since 1970.
* Haaland is unsurprisingly the quickest player ever to reach three Premier League hat-tricks after getting there in eight(!) games. The previous record holder was Michael Owen, who managed it in a sluggish 48 games. Next best are Ruud van Nistelrooy, who took 59 games, Fernando Torres (64) and Andy Cole (65).
* Haaland’s 15 Premier League goals have come from 38 shots and, even more ridiculously, 218 total touches. That’s a shot conversion rate of 39.4%, and a touch conversion rate of 6.88%. To be entirely clear about what we’re saying here: roughly one in six of Haaland’s touches is a shot, and roughly one in 14 of Haaland’s touches is a goal.
* After a couple of assists to set up Phil Foden in the derby took his total for the season to three, we can add another layer of Haaland daftness there: 8.9% – better than one in 12 – of Haaland’s touches produce a goal or an assist.
* The back-to-back hat-tricks against Palace and Forest came from a combined total of 32 touches.
* Haaland is responsible for only 2.78% of Manchester City’s Premier League touches this season, but almost 24% of their shots and over 48% of their goals.
* Fourteen goals betters Didier Drogba’s total return in seven of his nine Premier League campaigns with Chelsea.
* Haaland is both the fastest and youngest player to reach 20 Champions League goals, obliterating Harry Kane’s really quite impressive previous benchmark of 24 games by 10 when reaching the landmark in just 14 games for Salzburg and Dortmund. At 20 years and 231 days old, Haaland was over a year younger than previous record-holder Kylian Mbappe as the youngest player to reach 20 Champions League goals.
* After just 23 caps, Haaland is joint eighth on the list of leading goalscorers for the Norway men’s national team with 21 goals (level with 79-cap legend Steffen Iversen) and needs just 13 more to overhaul Jorgen Juve’s benchmark of 33 which has stood since before World War Two.
Erling Haaland honours
Austrian Bundesliga: 2018/19, 2019/20
DFB-Pokal: 2020/21
Bundesliga Player of the Season: 2020/21
Bundesliga Player of the Month: January 2020, November 2020, April 2021, August 2021
Bundesliga Team of the Season: 2020/21, 2021/22
UEFA Champions League Squad of the Season: 2020/21
UEFA Champions League Forward of the Season: 2020/21
UEFA Champions League Top Goalscorer: 2020/21
UEFA Nations League Top Goalscorer: 2020/21
FIFA FIFPro World 11: 2021
Premier League Player of the Month: August 2022
Erling Haaland top-flight league goals record
Molde (Eliteserien) 2017-2018: 39 games, 14 goals
Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga) 2018-2020: 16 games, 17 goals
Borussia Dortmund (Bundesliga) 2020-2022: 67 games, 62 goals
Manchester City (Premier League) 2022: 9 games, 15 goals
Total: 131 games, 108 goals
Erling Haaland Champions League record
Red Bull Salzburg 2019-20: 6 games, 8 goals
Borussia Dortmund 2019-22: 13 games, 15 goals
Manchester City 2022: 3 games, 5 goals
Total: 22 games, 28 goals
Erling Haaland international record
Norway 2019-22: 23 games, 21 goals
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