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EPL TALK: City freak Haaland will score 50 goals this season

Manchester City's Erling Haaland holds up three fingers as he celebrates completing his hat-trick against Manchester United.
Manchester City's Erling Haaland celebrates completing his hat-trick against Manchester United. (PHOTO: Reuters/Phil Noble)

HE’S going to do it, isn’t he? Erling Haaland is going to knock in a half-century and adopt the lotus pose. He’s going to score 50 goals and wave away the accompanying hysteria like he’s pushing a moth out of his living room. He’s going to make history, like it’s nothing, because it is nothing. For him.

For Haaland, scoring is breathing, a natural part of his being. He accepts his genetic gifts like a weary superhero acknowledging the double-edged sword of powers and responsibilities, as all great athletes must.

Swimmer Ian Thorpe was born with size-17 feet. So he turned his feet into flippers and his body into an outboard motor. Basketballer Yao Ming took a 2.29m-tall frame and crafted a rocket, giving everyone else a problem when they visited Houston. And Haaland has done, well, what exactly?

He’s a lab experiment gone right. He’s Gary Lineker’s poaching instincts at Mexico ’86. He’s Alan Shearer, in the air, in his Blackburn Rovers prime. He’s Didier Drogba’s strength. He’s Zlatan Ibrahimović’s imposing stature and Eric Cantona’s wry sense of humour, never forgetting that it’s just a game, just a job, one that he happens to be ridiculously good at, perhaps even the best in the world.

That’s a discussion for another day. There’s more fun to be had now in discussing what’s possible, what’s measurable in a season destined to break more records than American fundamentalists denouncing The Beatles in the Sixties.

Haaland is going to break lots of stuff. Records. Teams. Defenders. Egos. He’s started already, becoming that annoying father who tells his kid in goal where he’s going to place the shot, puts it there anyway and still scores.

The Manchester City striker has knocked in as many English Premier League hat-tricks – three – as Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United. Haaland has played eight league games for City. Ronaldo first joined United when Haaland was three years old.

Until the demolition derby at the Etihad, Michael Owen had previously been the quickest player to score three EPL hat tricks. He needed 48 games for Liverpool and was considered a once-in-a-generation wunderkind blessed with raw speed and preternatural confidence.

So what are we calling Haaland then? The Norwegian leaves football scribblers hunting for superlatives like a cheap uncle scrambling for reduced items on a supermarket shelf. There are not many left. The best ones are taken. We’re already repeating ourselves.

Jaw-dropping statistics

So let’s stick with the statistics for a moment, just the facts, man-monster. Haaland’s 14 EPL goals means he has currently outscored 14 other teams. If he maintains his current scoring rate, according to the Guardian, he’ll score 78 EPL goals this season. Common sense suggests otherwise, but there’s nothing common or sensical about Norway’s most hypnotic spectacle since the Northern Lights.

Haaland is a live-action reimagining of a Disney classic, a real boy, with cartoonish physical traits – the ponytail, the mule-like legs, the giraffe in the box, the salmon in the air, an absurd creation from Geppetto’s Workshop, only he’s real. We are watching a fantasy in real time.

And this fantasy could reach 50 goals in all competitions. Easily. He’s already got 17 in 11 games in all competitions for Manchester City, more than a third of the way towards a half-century. He’ll also be World Cup-free and EPL-fresh to resume the weekly bludgeoning in mid-December, the returning nightmare before Christmas.

Clive Allen is suitably concerned. The retired striker has been making the media rounds of late and will continue to do so as Haaland threatens to treat Allen’s legacy with as much respect as he treated the defensive pairing of Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane.

Allen’s 49 goals in the 1986/87 campaign remain a top-flight record in English football. The dependable finisher benefitted from Tottenham's relentless service, as Spurs captured lightning in a bottle with Allen, Chris Waddle, Glenn Hoddle and Ossie Ardiles all in their prime, for a single season.

Erling Haaland (centre) celebrates with Manchester City teammates Phil Foden (left) and Kevin de Bruyne after scoring against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Erling Haaland (centre) celebrates with Manchester City teammates Phil Foden (left) and Kevin de Bruyne after scoring against Wolverhampton Wanderers. (PHOTO: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

But City do it every season. City do it every week. City did it for 44 minutes in a Manchester derby so one-sided, the hosts barely mustered the energy to mock their hollowed-out rivals in the stands. There’s no need to sing when they’re winning. They’re always winning.

Kevin de Bruyne, Phil Foden and Haaland were effectively playing Blind Man’s Bluff among themselves, spinning hapless defenders around in endless circles, skipping away from them, laughing at them. Blindfolds were not required. The Red Devils' eyes were open and still they could not see.

De Bruyne and Foden ghosted away. Bernardo Silva floated just behind. There were fleeting glimpses of Jack Grealish, here and there, enough to alarm, still not quite enough to fully persuade Pep Guardiola perhaps, but more than enough for United.

But Haaland isn’t a ghost. That’s the terrifying bit. He doesn’t sneak around in the shadows. At 1.94m, he makes the shadows. He cannot hide or deceive, nor does he need to. He speaks of his physical superiority as a statement of fact. “If I time my runs properly I know that no one can stop them,” he said before the derby, channeling his best Ivan Drago.

And he’s right. His take-off for his header was anticipated. Three United jerseys took off with him, pointlessly, like kids trying to catch a kite.

For Haaland’s second and third goals, United’s defenders saw him in the box, just not as quickly as he saw the space in his mind. Regular players gamble. Haaland calculates. His sums are perfect.

City’s numbers are looking pretty decent, too. De Bruyne, Foden, Silva and Grealish are slicing through lines to feed their eternally famished forward. Haaland exists like a pygmy shrew, rarely resting, always foraging, forever trying to satisfy a unique appetite.

The pygmy shrew must eat three times its body weight daily to stay alive. Haaland scores three times a game to feel likewise. The search for sustenance never ends.

He will not stop. He cannot be stopped by conventional means - or United defenders. Only fate can intervene now.

If it doesn’t, the 50-goal target looms large on the horizon, like Haaland arriving in the box, carrying only a sense of inevitability.

Haaland exists like a pygmy shrew, rarely resting, always foraging, forever trying to satisfy a unique appetite. The pygmy shrew must eat three times its body weight daily to stay alive. Haaland scores three times a game to feel likewise.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 26 books.

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