Erling Haaland has big shoes to fill at City, but he’s more than up to the task.
Alan Shearer believes Erling Haaland can lead Manchester City to a third consecutive Premier League title.
City won back-to-back Premier League titles despite not having a true striker, but this summer Pep Guardiola and the club decided it was time to shake things up. Erling Haaland, the 22-year-old striker who has been sending shockwaves across Europe with his goal-scoring exploits since joining Borussia Dortmund in 2020, is one of City’s new signings.
Man City paid £51m to bring Haaland to the Etihad and will be hoping that he can help them maintain their hold on the Premier League and push on to win an elusive first Champions League title. Manchester City has a pretty good pedigree when it comes to strikers; Sergio Aguero scored 260 goals in 360 appearances in all competitions for the Blues and is the club’s all-time leading goal-scorer.
However, in his BBC Sport predictions column, the Premier League’s all-time record goal-scorer Shearer said he thinks Haaland could go on to set his own records, as well as prove the difference in the title race.
“If I had to choose a [Premier League] winner now, it would be City — just about — because of Erling Haaland,” Shearer said.
The 26 goals Sergio Aguero scored in 2014/15 is the record for the most goals scored by a City player in a single Premier League season.
Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah holds the record for the most goals scored by a player in a single 38-game Premier League season, his tally of 32 in 2017/18 falling just shy of the 34 goals notched by Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer in 1993/94 and 1994/95 respectively (although those were both 42-game seasons).
Milestones aside, Shearer believes that Haaland will have no issues finding the back of the net for his new team, although there may be a bit of adaptation required on both sides.
“He is going to get many, many more chances for City because of the quality of their players and the service they will give him,” he added.
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