Erling Haaland has – once again – started a Premier League season in blistering form. But is the Manchester City goal machine playing the best football of his life?
By his own ridiculously high standards, Erling Haaland isn’t having his best start to a season.
With nine goals in seven games, he is the Premier League’s top scorer, three ahead of his nearest challenger (Antoine Semenyo) yet this is also, in goalscoring terms, somehow still the second-worst start to any of his four campaigns since his move to England. Having hit 11 in his first seven games in the competition at the start of 2022-23, he also managed 10 in his first seven to kick off 2024-25.
But these aren’t really fair standards to judge anyone on – even Haaland. Those more fruitful starts to a season of his are the best two by any player in the Premier League era. That is, the only player to outscore his 2025-26 efforts in the first seven games of any season in the competition’s history is Haaland himself.
Only two players have scored more goals inside their team's opening seven games of a Premier League season than Erling Haaland has in 2025-26 (9).
Erling Haaland in 2022-23 and Erling Haaland in 2024-25. pic.twitter.com/gzpDZ3JTYi
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) October 5, 2025
And while he hasn’t scored quite as many Premier League goals this time around as he has done at the start of seasons past, there is something about Haaland this term that looks different. Somehow, he appears to be even better. It’s something the player believes, too.
Haaland scored the only goal in Manchester City’s 1-0 win at Brentford just before the international break, with an impressive effort for which he shrugged off the attentions of two defenders before finishing calmly. Afterwards, he was asked by Sky Sports if he was in the best form of his life.
“Yes, you can say so,” the striker replied. “I’ve never felt better than I do now.”
That strike meant he had scored in nine consecutive appearances for club and country for the first time in his career. Then, on international duty over the weekend, he added a hat-trick against Israel to make it 10 games in a row and move him past 50 international goals. With 10 in his last seven for Man City and nine in his last three for Norway, he has an incredible 19 goals in those 10 matches.
Erling Haaland record in last 10 games
His goal at Brentford also meant he did something he had previously always failed to do by finding the net at the G-Tech Community Stadium. He has now scored at 22 of the 23 stadiums he’s played at in the Premier League (failing only at Anfield), the highest ratio of any player to appear at more than one ground in the competition’s history (96%).
There are signs that he really is getting better. Physically, Haaland has appeared even more difficult for defenders to handle.
“It’s brute strength,” remarked Gary Neville after Haaland’s goal at Brentford, which eventually proved the winner. “It’s an old-fashioned centre-forward beating up a centre-back and then going past another!”
Erling Haaland goal vs Brentford
Haaland loves the physical side of the game and thrives when up against defenders who try and make life tough for him. After the Brentford win, he said the over-physical approach of centre-back Sepp van den Berg had given him extra motivation.
“[In the] first five minutes, he just kept on pushing me, so I said ‘all right, let’s have it’. So, then I started pushing him back.
“I think it helps me because I was a bit tired before the game, I was thinking it’s going to be tough. Then after 10 seconds, he started pushing me and it motivated me.
“All praise to him, honestly, he made me want to do that.”
Elsewhere, his ongoing and unrelenting rivalry with Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhães is always a fascinating watch because they’re both giants and neither of them will shy away from the physical battle.
In their meeting at the Emirates last month, Haaland had a largely thankless task up against Gabriel and William Saliba, probably the best centre-back pairing in the country, but he occupied them both on his own, causing them problems all afternoon. He scored a brilliant breakaway goal early in the first half after brushing off Gabriel in midfield and storming away from Saliba, and he should really have added another in the second half after going clean through on goal, let down by an uncharacteristically weak finish.
That day, as is always the case, he had to work extremely hard without having much possession himself. He spends most of the time completely uninvolved, averaging just 24.2 touches of the ball per 90 – the third lowest in the Premier League in 2025-26 of all players to play at least 300 minutes, behind Sunderland’s Wilson Isidor (18.5) and Nottingham Forest’s Chris Wood (21.1).
But while Forest and Sunderland spend much of their time on the back foot, Haaland is also asked to press from the front. He ranks 10th among centre-forwards and wingers in the Premier League this season for total distance covered (66.3km) and seventh for pressures applied (477). Among the same group, Isidor ranks 29th and 20th, respectively, and Wood ranks 18th and 14th. Haaland has to work extremely hard for very little time on the ball, and when he does get it, he is inevitably under a lot of pressure from defenders.
Erling Haaland pressures premier league 2025-26
He therefore does most of his on-ball work with his back to goal, fighting off defenders constantly, often just to lay the ball off to a teammate, if he manages to get a touch at all. He has possession facing the opposition’s goal remarkably rarely; he has found the back of the net almost as many times in the Premier League this season (9) as he has found a teammate with a forward pass (11).
That’s because of how close defenders get to him: 69.6% of Haaland’s touches this season have come under ‘high’ pressure, which means he has an opponent within two metres of him. Given how few touches he has overall, very few are without a defender engaging him in a physical battle.
But as he said after the Brentford game, that pressure only drives him on, and the numbers show it doesn’t affect his output. His pass completion rate only drops marginally – from 63.2% to 62.7% – when under high pressure, and only Jack Grealish (48) has had more touches in the opposition box while under high pressure than him (42) this season.
As everyone is well aware, Haaland comes into his own in the penalty area. He has always been exceptional at making the most of the opportunities he gets, but this season he appears to be even more efficient than usual.
He is averaging 1.36 goals per 90 in Premier League games this season, and none of them have come from the spot, meaning he is having his best season for goals and non-penalty (NP) goals per 90. Haaland is averaging more expected goals per 90 (1.16 xG) than in any other season and more shots per 90 (4.4), too. Lastly, and arguably most importantly, the average xG value of each of his shots is higher than in any other season (0.27 xG per shot), showing that he is getting into better goalscoring positions, and doing so more often.
Erling Haaland Premier League season stats comparison
NP Goals/90 = Non-Penalty Goals per 90
It’s also worth mentioning that in his other fast starts to Premier League seasons, he has scored at least one penalty, but this season, he has not had any opportunities from 12 yards.
The evidence suggests Haaland is in a good place; that this fast start might be the beginning of one of his truly spectacular goalscoring campaigns.
“It is about preparation first of all, getting ready for the games,” he said last week when asked for the reasons behind his brilliant form. “I’ve spoken many times about it before. You can be physically ready, but you need to be mentally ready as well.”
He certainly looks ready, but last season gives some reason for pause. Haaland followed up scoring 10 in his first six games of 2024-25 by scoring just three times in his next 13 appearances as City fell away and never properly recovered. He also claimed he’d “never felt better” back in August 2024, citing a full summer’s rest “with no Euros” as the reason for his fast start, but ended the season with ‘only’ 22 Premier League goals.
So, will it be any different this time around? That’s impossible to say for sure. Whether or not he does could quite feasibly be the decisive factor in City’s title challenge.
Whatever ultimately happens, the early signs are ominous for their rivals.
Premier League Stats Opta
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