Erling Haaland leads the 2025/26 Premier League goalscoring charts with five goals in four matches. Football writer Alex Keble discusses whether the Manchester City striker is playing his best football yet.
"Erling [Haaland] has been incredible since the start but this season he is better than ever," Pep Guardiola said on Sunday. "I would say better than [he was in] the Treble year."
Seven goals over the last week signals a return to form for Manchester City's No 9, but it wasn’t his strike rate – a brace in the Manchester derby and five for Norway against Moldova five days earlier - that prompted Guardiola to go one step further and declare Haaland is at a new peak.
It was the Norwegian's all-round game, from excellent link play between the lines and the six clearances made in his own penalty area to - most significantly - the style of his two goals at the Etihad Stadium against Manchester United on Sunday.
Clinical, powerful, deadly - it was Haaland at the top of his game.
Watch Haaland's goals v Man Utd
He might well be better than ever, in part thanks to his manager’s tactical changes.
Haaland 'better than ever' this season because Man City are more direct
It might come as a surprise to hear Haaland’s record of five goals in four matches is, in fact, his worst start to a Premier League campaign.
Haaland always races out of the blocks after the summer break. For him, five from four is only just par for non-penalty goals.
Haaland's goals after first four PL matches
| Season | Goals scored | Non-penalty goals |
| 2022/23 | 6 | 5 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023/24 | 6 | 5 |
| 2024/25 | 9 | 8 |
| 2025/26 | 5 | 5 |
For that reason alone we ought to take the following statistical comparison with a pinch of salt, because Haaland may regress towards the average after his explosive beginning.
But it’s still worth highlighting Haaland’s overall attacking numbers so far this season, which represent an upturn on a 2024/25 campaign that brought only 22 Premier League goals, his lowest final tally since arriving in England in 2022.
As we can see, Haaland’s attacking stats aren’t just up from last season. They are at record-high levels.
Indeed, if he keeps scoring at this incredible rate of 1.32 goals per 90, Haaland will become the first player to breach the 40-goal mark in the modern era.
Haaland's PL attacking stats (average per 90)
| Stat | 22/23 | 23/24 | 24/25 | 25/26 |
| Goals | 36 (1.17) | 27 (0.95) | 22 (0.72) | 5 (1.32) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-penalty goals | 29 (0.83) | 20 (0.87) | 19 (0.61) | 5 (1.32) |
| Shot conversion % | 29.3 | 22.3 | 20.4 | 26.3 |
| Total shots | 123 (4.0) | 121 (4.3) | 108 (3.5) | 19 (5.0) |
| xG | 28.5 (0.92) | 29.3 (1.03) | 22.01 (0.72) | 5.74 (1.52) |
Scroll horizontally to see full table
The reason for his fast start (in tone and style, as much as goals scored) could be confidence, fitness, or the type of opponent Haaland has faced so far.
Or it could be because Haaland is benefitting from Guardiola’s well-documented shift towards a more urgent and direct style of football this season, as the numbers from the last five years show.
Man City’s "fast breaks" have more than doubled since last season and they are already close to surpassing their total fast-break goals tallies from the last two years. Their "direct speed" is up, their percentage of passes that go forward has increased by a fifth, while their average number of passes per sequence has plummeted.
Man City's fast-break attacks in last five seasons
| Stat | 21/22 | 22/23 | 23/24 | 24/25 | 25/26 |
| Fast breaks per game | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 1.8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goals from fast breaks | 2 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Through-balls per game | 2.7 | 2.5 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 3.5 |
| Direct speed | 1.56 | 1.48 | 1.38 | 1.43 | 1.60 |
| Passes per sequence | 5.29 | 5.35 | 5.58 | 5.12 | 4.30 |
| Passes forward % | 25.8 | 26.3 | 25.1 | 24.2 | 29.4 |
Scroll horizontally to see full table
Haaland, of course, loves this. We saw him gallop through on goal three times against Man Utd, twice finishing brilliantly, in a Borussia Dortmund-esque performance.
This is the most likely reason Haaland is averaging 1.52 non-penalty xG per game this season. No player has ever averaged above 1.0 over a full season.
If Man City keep playing in this way, Haaland will get more and more chances. It could lead to a record-breaking year.
Haaland’s record-setting scoring rate tells us he will catch Shearer
Even if we don’t account for the recent acceleration in Haaland's numbers – for the distinct possibility the latest version of Guardiola’s Man City is tailor-made for the striker's attributes – he is on track to become the Premier League’s best-ever goalscorer.
Haaland hasn’t yet reached a century of Premier League goals (he has scored 90 in 101 games) but he will do soon. His rate of 0.89 goals per match is substantially better than every member of the Premier League 100 club.
Best scoring rates for players with 100+ PL goals
| Player | Goals per game |
| Thierry Henry | 0.68 |
|---|---|
| Harry Kane | 0.67 |
| Sergio Aguero | 0.67 |
| Mohamed Salah | 0.62 |
Haaland is a long way off Alan Shearer’s record of 260 goals, but he does have eight more goals (90) than Shearer had (82) at the same stage on the journey (101 appearances).
Having signed a new contract in January that ties him to Man City until 2034, Haaland has plenty of time to catch up.
At his current rate of 0.89 goals per 90, Haaland needs 193 more matches to beat Shearer's record.
He has averaged 31 Premier League games a season since joining City, meaning he is on course to overtake Shearer in 6.2 years, breaking the record around December 2031 – with two-and-a-half years left on his current deal.
If Haaland’s 2025/26 scoring rate – 1.32 per 90 – was to become the new norm, he would overtake Shearer in just 130 matches, or marginally over four seasons.
If the Man City striker does continue with the numbers we are seeing in 2025/26, then he will enter the Premier League's all-time top 10 goalscorers – overtaking Jermain Defoe’s tally of 162 – almost exactly two years from now.
But these are all just hypotheticals, and who knows what might change over the next half-decade or more that could get in the way of Haaland reeling Shearer in.
Instead of looking to the future, we ought to live in the present and enjoy Haaland’s performances in the here and now.
Based on goals per game, and his razor-sharp display against Man Utd, the evidence suggests Haaland is indeed reaching new heights. Besides, if Guardiola – the man who works with him every day – says Haaland is better than ever, who are we to disagree?