Erling Haaland: How many goals will Manchester City striker score this season?
- Article published before the Manchester Derby and City's win over Copenhagen
Erling Haaland is taking the Premier League by storm.
The Norwegian has netted 11 times in just seven league games, meaning he has 31 games to score a further 22 times which would set a new 38-game season scoring record.
He needs 24 from those remaining fixtures to break the all-time top-flight record, currently jointly-held by Andrew Cole (1993/94) and Alan Shearer (1994/95), with both legends notching 34 in a 42-game season.
Haaland is currently averaging an eye-watering 1.72 goals per 95 minutes in this admittedly young season.
Why do Sporting Life Infogol use per 95 minutes rather than per 90?
- Based on studies and calculations, the actual average length of a football match, including any added time, is 95 minutes. By using per 95 rather than per 90, we get a truer reflection of what we can expect from a player in a match.
- An example from last season; Donny van de Beek came on for Manchester United against Crystal Palace in the 86th minute - many sites have him down as playing five minutes, not taking into account the five minutes of added time he was on the field for too. In total he was on the pitch for 10 minutes. Per 90 doesn't take into account the extra minutes played and can skew data accordingly.
In terms of expected goals (xG), Manchester City's number nine is over-performing somewhat, with his 11 league goals coming from chances equating to 7.62 xG - the Norwegian averaging a league-high 1.19 xG/95.
Incredibly, Haaland has been on the end of 12 non-penalty big chances in seven games - the same as the entire Arsenal team.
There is still a long way to go in the season, with the added caveat of a mid-season World Cup, but Haaland must have the scoring record in his mind as a seriously achievable target.
But just how achievable is it? Well, with some mathsy stuff, we can make a decent educated guess.
I did the same thing last season around Aleksandr Mitrovic's incredible season and the calculations proved to be pretty accurate - granted we had a much larger sample size to extrapolate from.
Using the same calculations, it was predicted that the Serb would most likely finish on 42 goals - he netted 43.
So, let's see how we do with Haaland, though I will again emphasise the smaller sample size with which we are working with at this stage.
How do we calculate how many goals a player can be EXPECTED to score?
Without a crystal ball, it is impossible to accurately predict how many goals Haaland will score from now until the end of the season. However, we can make a solid estimation based on the data.
First of all, we need to work out how many goals Manchester City are expected to score in their remaining 31 games of the season.
Infogol has team ratings for each club in all of the competitions it covers, and with those team ratings we can calculate a probability of each team winning each future game, as well as how many goals a team is likely to score and concede in each of those matches.
Using this method, we calculate that across their remaining Premier League games, City are expected to score 76.9 goals.
Next, we need to look at what percentage share of those future goals will likely be scored by Haaland.
To do this, we will use Man City's xGF per game total from their first seven games and Haaland's xG/95 tally to get a percentage share.
Pep Guardiola's side have racked up a huge 2.44 xGF per game through the opening stretches of the season, with their number nine Haaland (1.19 xG/95) getting on the end of roughly 49% of City's xG on a game-by-game basis.
Now we have that percentage, we can calculate the most likely number of goals Haaland is expected to score for the remainder of the season, by taking the number of goals City are expected to score (76.9) and multiplying it by our percentage in decimal form (0.49) to get 37.7.
How many goals will Haaland score?
So, the most likely number of goals the Norwegian will score over the remainder of the season is roughly 38. That would take his season tally to an insane 49 goals.
However, as said before, we don't have mystical powers that allow us to look into the future, so we can't say "Haaland will score 38 goals in the City's remaining 31 games".
Instead, we need to look at the different number of goals he can possibly score, along with the percentage chance of him scoring each number of goals - this being done via a Poisson distribution.
What is a Poisson distribution?
- In statistics, a Poisson distribution is a probability metric that is used to show how many times an event is likely to occur over a specified period.
By doing this, and using the calculations above, we see that - if both he and City continue at the same rate - Haaland can statistically score anywhere between 18 and 60 goals from now until the end of the season.
According to the metric, the most likely number of goals he scores in the remaining games is 38, with a 6.5% chance of him netting that eye-watering amount.
He only needs 24 to break the current Premier League single season scoring record (which was done in a 42-game season), and the calculations suggest he has a 99% chance of doing so if rates remain the same.
Sporting Life specials - Erling Haaland goals scored - currently on 11 (via Sky Bet)
- 8/11 - Haaland to score 33+ goals
- 11/8 - Haaland to score 35+ goals
- 4/1 - Haaland to score 38+ goals
- 7/1 - Haaland to score 40+ goals
- 50/1 - Haaland to score 45+ goals
Visit the market here (Odds correct at 2130 - 27/09/22)
It seems ridiculous to think a player could score 35+ in the Premier League, but it could well happen this term.
The key will be fitness, as City are so superior to nearly every team in the league that Pep's side will be expected to score at least two or three goals in every game this term.
Fortunately for Haaland, and another strong reason why he could do the previously unthinkable and break the record, Norway aren't at the World Cup, which means he will have a full month to rest and recuperate while others are playing in the football's biggest tournament.
It sounds ridiculous, but the 50/1 about him netting 45+ could prove a huge price if things continue in the same manner.