We look at Erling Haaland’s goal records across all competitions at Manchester City since signing for the Premier League club last summer.
Erling Haaland ended the 2022-23 league campaign with 36 goals: a Premier League record in a single season by a player. That’s scary enough, but considering this was his first season in the Premier League and that he’ll only just have turned 23 years old at the start of 2023-24, you wonder how soon he’ll be threatening the Premier League all-time goal record.
He’s currently on 52 goals from 52 appearances in all competitions in 2022-23, with this by far the greatest goalscoring campaign by a player at a Premier League club within a single season. His 52 goals have seen him surpass both Mohamed Salah’s (2017-18 for Liverpool) and Ruud van Nistelrooy’s (2002-03 for Manchester United) 44-goal tallies in a season of competitive action for a Premier League club. This record was broken as quickly as in his 39th appearance of the season for Man City, and his side still have the UEFA Champions League final against Inter Milan to play on Saturday.
Of course, football didn’t begin in 1992 with the introduction of the Premier League. Dixie Dean holds the all-time record for competitive goals in a single season for a top-flight club. His 63 goals for Everton in 1927-28 came in just 41 matches (1.54 goals per game) and he had 11 more than Haaland has at this stage of his season (39 appearances).
There’s no chance that Haaland could break Dean’s all-time English record, with the Man City star needing 11 goals against Inter Milan in the 2022-23 UCL final to even draw level with the Everton great.
Dean also holds the record for the most goals in an English top-flight league season, with 60 of his 63 goals in 1927-28 for Everton coming in Division One on the way to winning the league title.
Haaland would have been disappointed not to have become the first player to score 40 top-flight league goals in a season within England since Jimmy Greaves for Chelsea in 1960-61 (41), with his relatively poor return of one goal in Man City’s last five league games (of which he was rested once) not helping.
Haaland did, however, manage to become the first player to reach 35 goals in a top-flight season since Welsh striker Ron Davies for Southampton in 1966-67 (37).
While Haaland has already broken the Man City club record for most goals in a season across all competitions, set by Tommy Johnson in 1928-29 (38 goals), all of Johnson’s goals that season were in the league. This means Haaland failed to break Man City’s top-flight league record in a season, set by Johnson. One target for 2023-24, at least.
We all know by now that Haaland broke the single-season Premier League goal record with his 36 goals. The previous record of 34, set by both Alan Shearer in 1994-95 at Blackburn Rovers and Andrew Cole at Newcastle in 1993-94, came in 42-game seasons in the Premier League, while the 38-game season record stood at 32, set by Mohamed Salah in 2017-18.
Special mention should be saved for Cole’s effort. None of his 34 goals came via penalties, while this was his first season as a top-flight player, after his goals helped Newcastle win promotion from the second tier in 1992-93. Not only this, but Cole also led the Premier League assist charts that season with 13 and his 47 total goal involvements in 1993-94 are another shared record with Alan Shearer.
Whilst Cole’s 47 goal involvements that season are still a Premier League record alongside Shearer’s 47 a year later, Haaland’s assist for Phil Foden at Brighton in May was his 44th Premier League goal involvement in 2022-23 (36 goals, eight assists) – a joint record in a 38-game Premier League season, along with Thierry Henry in 2002-03 (24 goals, 20 assists).
With Man City lifting the trophy in 2022-23, Haaland became the first player to win the Premier League Golden Boot award for the eventual title winners since Robin van Persie with Manchester United in 2012-13.
He also became the third player to score 30+ goals in their debut Premier League campaign, after Andrew Cole (34 in 1993-94) and Kevin Phillips (30 in 1999-00).
With hat-tricks against Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United, Haaland became the first player in Premier League history to score a hat-trick in three consecutive home appearances. Overall, he scored four hat-tricks at the Etihad Stadium, the joint-most at home by a player in a single season in Premier League history alongside Shearer’s four in 1995-96.
Shearer’s total of five hat-tricks overall that season are still the most in a single EPL campaign, with Haaland falling one short (four) in 2022-23. Across all competitions, however, Haaland scored six hat-tricks, the most ever by a Premier League player in a single season.
Coming into the final, Haaland leads the 2022-23 UEFA Champions League scoring charts, with 12 goals. Of course, five of those came in a single match – his five-goal performance against RB Leipzig in the UCL last 16 is one of just three seen in the history of the competition.
He’d have to repeat that five-goal feat against Internazionale to equal Cristiano Ronaldo’s record tally of 17 for Real Madrid in 2013-14 in a single UCL season, as the Portuguese fired his side to the title. That feels unlikely, but there’s every chance that the Norwegian will end up bothering Ronaldo’s all-time UCL goal record of 140, with Haaland on a frightening 35 goals in 29 games in the competition ahead of the 2022-23 final in Istanbul.
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