HAALAND THE ONE-HIT WONDER
City’s lethal marksman doesn’t give defenders any time to think, scoring a remarkable 85 per cent of goals with his first touch…
Cotton Eye Joe is in good company for there is a new one-hit wonder storming the charts, and if it hadn’t been for Erling Haaland, Arsenal might have been champions a long time ago.
Statistics gathered by Sportsmail show that Haaland has scored 28 of his 33 Premier League goals with a single touch, including his latest strike in Wednesday’s 4-1 demolition of Arsenal. To gather the data, we watched back all of the Manchester City striker’s goals this season and those of the Golden Boot’s previous winners.
With Haaland, there is no dawdling on the ball. No setting himself to shoot. No dribbling like Mohamed Salah. No charging forward on the counter like Son Heung-min.
Those two shared last season’s Golden Boot on 23 goals, with Salah and Son scoring 13 and 12 via firsttime finishes respectively. Before that, Harry Kane scored 13 out of 23. Before that, Jamie Vardy scored 14 out of 23. And so on.
Haaland’s 28 out of 33 is unprecedented as 85 per cent of his finishes have been struck first time.
‘One, it emphasises his elite movement to get into position,’ says Chris Sutton, the Premier League’s jointtop scorer with Blackburn in 1997-98. ‘Two, it means the service is exceptional. And three, it shows his confidence to be willing to strike without hesitation.
‘Strikers can overthink when they get within range of goal but he doesn’t. City are creating chances for him where he doesn’t need to do anything other than finish and he has that clarity in his mind to do the rest. It’s an art form. He is a freak of football — in a nice way.’
This was evident on Wednesday. Haaland could not beat Aaron Ramsdale when he squeezed between Rob Holding and Oleksandr
Zinchenko (five touches), when he fired wide from 18 yards (eight touches), when he raced through one-onone (four touches).
But football’s finest finisher did eventually score in stoppage time, when he met Phil Foden’s pass first time to complete his evisceration of Holding and Gabriel in Arsenal’s defence.
As startling as his statistics are, perhaps we should not be so surprised. Haaland spoke about this desire after arriving at City from Borussia Dortmund, saying: ‘My dream is to touch the ball five times and score five goals. That’s my biggest dream.’
His Premier League debut against West Ham gave us a glimpse of this side to his game. After dispatching a penalty at the London Stadium, his next goal saw Kevin De Bruyne thread a throughball in behind the Hammers defence. Whereas some strikers may have taken a touch, Haaland instead used his speed to run around the ball and open his body to shoot beyond a despairing Alphonse Areola.
He has since headed in crosses against opponents (such as Manchester United and Wolves), tapped in at the back post (Crystal Palace and Aston Villa), finished cut-backs (Newcastle and Everton), scored acrobatically (Southampton) and met De Bruyne’s perfect passes (too many to mention).
The element of surprise can catch out goalkeepers and this is not exclusive to England. It extends to Europe, too. Of Haaland’s 49 goals in all competitions, 41 have been first-time finishes, including the five he buried against RB Leipzig in a single Champions League game. Forget Witch Doctor and whatever other one-hit wonders you can conjure up. There is no ‘ting tang’ or ‘walla walla’, or even the ‘bing’, from Haaland. Just the ‘bang’ as he buries City’s chances unlike any Golden Boot winner we have seen before him.