You’d be a fool to bet against Man City’s Erling Haaland breaking 94-year record this season

Erling Haaland scored his 45th goal of the 2022/23 campaign in Manchester City’s 3-0 win over Bayern Munich on Tuesday night.
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Monster. Sensation. Revelation. Behemoth. Animal. Colossus. Beast. Brute. Freak. We are running out of words to describe Erling Haaland, just as those unfortunate enough to be tasked with defending against him are running out of ways to stop him.

The Manchester City *checks thesaurus* leviathan scored his 45th goal of the season in all competitions on Tuesday evening - a feat that no other player in England has accomplished since the inception of the Premier League some thirty years ago. There have been a couple of 44-strike hauls (Mo Salah in 2017/18, and Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2002/03) but Haaland now stands alone, flaxen head and broad shoulders above his peers, unprecedented. What’s more, he has done it in 13 games fewer too.

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Of Haaland’s teetering stack, 28 have come with his left foot, 10 with his right, and seven with his head. There have been six penalties, and just as many hat-tricks. The Norwegian is, in short, fatally incalculable. Or at least, he is in some ways. In others, he is much, much more inevitable.

Erling Haaland celebrates scoring his 45th goal of 2022/23Erling Haaland celebrates scoring his 45th goal of 2022/23
Erling Haaland celebrates scoring his 45th goal of 2022/23

There has been a lot of discourse in recent days about spoilers - about major news publications ruining certain primetime HBO dramas for the sake of cheap engagement. You would imagine that even the wolfish Roy family at the heart of said drama would draw the line at some of the frivolous, unthinking gimmickry that has been churned out since the early hours of Monday morning. For his part, Erling Haaland is a spoiler made flesh, the human embodiment of a marred ending. He will score - that much is predestined like the swing of the Grim Reaper’s scythe or the scorching heat death of the universe - it is just a matter of when.

Haaland has arrived on these shores like the unfrozen corpse of a Viking beserker - preserved in a hitherto undiscovered crevice of some Nordic glacier or other and reanimated by a crack team of Cold War scientists in a top secret Soviet facility using rhinoceros DNA and the Zen teachings of an enlightened sect of Nepalese Buddhist monks. After just 39 games, he has already crowbarred his way into the conversation surrounding the most daunting goalscorers to ever grace the English game.

In fact, he is having that most hallowed of accolades bestowed upon him; the Dixie Dean comparison. During the 1927/28 campaign, Dean scored 63 goals in all competitions for Everton, with 60 of those coming in the league. Football, of course, has changed beyond recognition in the century since, but despite playing against defenders in hobnail boots and pelting goalkeepers with what were essentially medicine balls, his accomplishments remain a dizzying, almost incomprehensible testament to an otherworldly presence.

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Haaland will not surpass Dean’s record in the league this season; he would need to score 30 goals in his next nine top flight outings. You fear that a return of that ilk might be beyond even him. But there is a chance that he could eclipse his total tallly across all competitions. If City go all the way in both the FA Cup and the Champions League - and bear in mind they are in the semi-final of the former and as good as into the last four of the latter - then he would have 15 games left to score the 18 goals needed to equal Dean’s endeavour. You would be a fool to bet against him.