Manchester City striker Erling Haaland scored the 44th Premier League goal his career over the weekend as the reigning champions beat Nottingham Forest at the Etihad Stadium.
Haaland has seen unprecedented success since he arrived in English football last summer, scoring 36 times in the Premier League during 2022/23 to set a new single season scoring record in the post-1992 era. Overall, the Norwegian bagged 52 in all competitions to also break City’s club record for goals in a single campaign, shattering the old record of 38 set by Tommy Johnson in 1928/29.
Already in 2023/24, Haaland has eight Premier League goals to his name in six games. He is the clear favourite to win the Golden Boot again and, on current form, is on course to better the 36 goals he scored in the division last season to potentially set another new record.
The next goal milestone on Haaland's radar is 50 in the Premier League. That in itself is not remarkable as there have been 123 players in the Premier League era to have reached half a century of goals, including Danny Murphy (50), Andrew Johnson (51), Trevor Sinclair (52), Steven Fletcher (53) and Andy Carroll (54). As many as 34 have scored 100 or more goals, with ten getting to 150.
What is incredible is the speed at which at Haaland is closing in on 50 goals. Given his prolific scoring rate, he could feasibly get his 50th Premier League goal in the next few weeks and therefore become the fastest to do so by some distance, perhaps in even 20 fewer games than the current record.
As it stands, the record for least number of games to score 50 Premier League goals belongs to Andrew Cole, who did it in 65 games over spells at Newcastle and Manchester United. That is slightly quicker than Alan Shearer, who scored his first 50 in the Premier League in 66 Blackburn games.
Ruud van Nistelrooy did in 68 games for Manchester United, while Fernando Torres and Mohamed Salah each took 72 games to get to 50 Premier League goals for Liverpool.
Haaland has scored his first 44 goals in just 41 appearances, giving him an average of 1.07 goals per game. Carrying on that rate of scoring would see him get to 50 in his 45th Premier League game. Assuming he plays continues to play every league match, his 45th appearance would happen to be the upcoming Manchester derby at Old Trafford on October 29.
Even if it doesn't happen quite that quickly, it is unthinkable that Haaland won't break the 50-goal speed record at some point as a result of just how far ahead of the curve he is. He would need to score five or less goals in his next 24 Premier League games to fail to break it.
Players to score 50 Premier League goals in fewest games
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This article was originally published on 90min as The next scoring record in Erling Haaland's sights.
