Manchester City remains unbeaten in the Premier League this season after Pep Guardiola’s holding league champions ran rampant in front of home support at the Etihad Stadium in a 4-0 thrashing of Southampton.
Saints traveled north from the south coast amid questions surrounding the immediate future of Ralph Hasenhüttl after reports surfaced that his back is against the wall at St. Mary’s, with this result possibly putting the nail in the Austrian’s coffin.
One of those that picked up the hammer was none other than Erling Haaland, who found the back of the net once again in what has been one of the most impressive starts to a player’s career in the history of the Premier League.
Haaland’s fifteenth league goal of the 2022-23 season is already turning heads in the footballing world as the 22-year-old Norwegian star has blitzed the competition since his summer arrival from Borussia Dortmund, with his second-half strike today seeing him score for seven-consecutive Premier League fixtures.
The Norwegian international could have had yet another brace on the day if not for his raking Gavin Bazunu’s far post in the first half after he was clean through on goal with a chance to put City in the lead, but Haaland has already proven to be the real deal this season and is now on track to challenge the consecutive goal’s record set by Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy.
After bagging a brace on the Premier League debut against West Ham, Bournemouth kept Haaland off the scoresheet despite the heavy defeat they suffered at the hands of City, which means that Haaland’s current run of games with a goal could well stand at nine rather than it’s current seven, which is just four behind Vardy’s eleven and having already equaled the same stint set by Romelu Lukaku, Sergio Agüero, Joe Willock, Mark Stein, Emmanuel Adebayor, Ian Wright, Thierry Henry, and Alan Shearer.
Goals could certainly be a common occurrence against Leicester, Fulham, and even Brentford, but Brighton and Liverpool offer possible stumbling blocks that could reset his goal-scoring run back to zero.
Despite that, he is currently on course to smash the single-season goal record (34) set by Andy Cole in 1993-94 before being equaled by Alan Shearer the following season.
Mo Salah came the closest to challenging that standing mark in 2017-18 when he hit 32 goals in the league, beating out Luis Suárez’s 31-goal-effort from 2013-14, and few would be surprised if Haaland not only went on to break the record but crash through the 40-goal barrier for the seventh time in English football history, with Everton legend Dixie Dean’s record of 60-goals back in 1927-28, on evidence, not out of the realm of the impossible should his run of form continue.
