Erling Haaland has scored 10 more Premier League goals than any other Manchester City player this season and they’ve only played nine games. Is it a problem?
Pep Guardiola isn’t shying away from the issue.
Manchester City have attracted considerable attention this season for a lack of goals from most areas of the team – essentially everywhere but Erling Haaland.
Guardiola’s adamant this can’t go on.
“Our other players have to step up,” he said after the weekend defeat to Aston Villa. “We have to score more. If we don’t create, it’s fine. But when we create, we have to score. They know it. We talk about it for a long time. In the training sessions they are good at finishing, so they have to do it. I don’t have doubts that when it is unlocked, players will score.”
Until something clicks, however, City are relying heavily on the abilities of Haaland. But to what extent?
Well, purely from a goals perspective, Haaland’s 11 in the Premier League this term accounts for 64.7% of City’s total of 17. He won’t, but were he to maintain that for the entire season, he’d comfortably smash the previous record, which is James Beattie scoring 53.5% of Southampton’s goals (23/43) in 2002-03.
Premier League - Proportion of Team Goals by Player
It’s a similar story when it comes to expected goals (xG) generated. Haaland’s shots in 2025-26 equate to 8.9 xG, which is 56.5% of the team’s total (15.78 xG). Again, that proportion is easily the greatest of any player on record (since 2012-13).
There’s obviously still time for outputs to level out somewhat, but a key source of concern in relation to City’s apparent reliance on Haaland is the fact no other City player has scored more than once in the Premier League in 2025-26; bar Haaland, only Burnley centre-back Maxime Estève – via two own goals – has scored as many as two times in the league for City this term.
While there are certainly worse finishers than Haaland to be dependent on, nothing suggests this is all part of some masterplan.
Discourse around overreliance on a single chief goalscorer is obviously nothing new, and Guardiola isn’t even the only Premier League manager who’s broached the subject in recent months.
Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca said in the summer that he’d rather have “four, five players scoring 10, 12 goals each” as opposed to one striker netting 40 goals, for example. And while he’s outside the Premier League, Paris Saint-Germain boss Luis Enrique said similar after Kylian Mbappé left PSG, and that season they went on to win their first ever UEFA Champions League title.
Now, it is worth considering that the perception of dependency isn’t necessarily bad. It can be deliberate and effective, so the fact Haaland has been so dangerous this term might be evidence of City being very efficient in some respects.
Nevertheless, based on what Guardiola’s said plus what we’ve seen from City in the past, it’s hard to believe what we’re seeing in 2025-26 is deliberate.
After all, for several years, one of the most notable differentiators of Guardiola’s City was how many players chipped in with goals, and that wasn’t an accident.
Pep Guardiola spreading goals around
“We have a lot of players scoring goals. We cannot win the title just with one or two players scoring,” Guardiola said in November 2017.
That season, City had eight players score five or more goals in the league en route to winning the title; they repeated that feat the season after, too. Similarly, in 2020-21, they had seven with 5+ league goals; in 2021-22, that was back up to eight players.
In the latter two campaigns, City won the Premier League title without a recognised centre-forward beyond Gabriel Jesus, and some would question whether he qualifies for such a distinction. Either way, he certainly wasn’t a prolific hitman up top.
Frequently around then, however, the idea that City were “missing” something because they didn’t have a prolific centre-forward was a fairly hot topic of discussion. And, seemingly, there were those at City who agreed, otherwise they’d not have signed Haaland in the first place.
Haaland was ultimately a key part of a team that won the treble in his first season, so it’s pretty difficult to make the claim that his influence has hurt City. But talk of “overreliance” gathered pace last term and is front and centre now.
In football, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Teams are frequently locked in a paradox with respect to goalscoring in the modern game. If one player provides a significant proportion of their goals, it doesn’t take long for the discourse to warp into accusations of full-on dependency.
This normally puts the chief goalscorer on a pedestal and leads to suggestions that teams are one major injury or a lean spell away from their season falling apart.
And yet, if another team doesn’t really have a single notable goalscorer and instead spread the goals around, often the dominant narrative becomes their apparent need for a “20-goal striker”; dare we say, someone they can “rely on” – oh, but not too much.
Publicly at least, Guardiola is confident the current situation won’t be this team’s norm. Wingers such as Savinho, Oscar Bobb and Jérémy Doku are all still quite young and therefore developing; Tijjani Reijnders joined having reached double figures for goals in Serie A last term and therefore has goalscoring pedigree; Rayan Cherki will be a goal threat when he’s fit enough to get a run of games; and Omar Marmoush – who’s only just returned from injury – was a real livewire last term after his mid-season move from Eintracht Frankfurt. It’s fair to suggest there are some extenuating circumstances, then.
Omar Marmoush shots 2024-25
Tijjani Reijnders shot map ac milan 2024-25
So maybe it’s actually slightly too early to speak about overreliance? And, although managers seem to prefer spreading the goals around, does perceived overreliance on one goalscorer even matter when chasing success?
Well, there are a few ways of looking at this.
When it comes to winning the Premier League title, the champions have averaged 5.9 players with 5+ goals that season. Of course, there are exceptions who have had a smaller concentration of at least semi-regular goalscorers, such as the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ having just two players with 5+ goals in 2003-04.
But spreading the goals around has been a notable strength for many Premier League champions, particularly those who’ve enjoyed sustained periods of success.
Manchester United won four of the first five Premier League titles, and across those campaigns, they averaged 6.3 players with 5+ league goals. United also lifted four out of five from 1998-99 onwards and averaged 6.5 players with 5+ league goals per season.
Man Utd goalscorers 1999-00
Looking more recently, City averaged 7.2 players per season with 5+ goals across their spell of dominance that saw them win the title six times in seven seasons until last term. In 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2021-22, they had eight players score at least five goals.
It could also be instructive to consider the difference in goals between the champions’ top scorer and second-highest scorer each season to get an idea of how reliant on a single player the league winners tend to be.
In 33 full seasons of Premier League football, the champions’ top scorer has scored 10 or more goals than any of their teammates on only nine occasions – so, 72.8% of the time, there has been a more balanced split between the eventual table-toppers’ top scorers.
Furthermore, in those nine title-winning scenarios, the issue of dependency was mostly only a single-season quirk. Sure, Haaland scored 25 goals more than any other City player in 2022-23, but that dropped to eight in 2023-24. Cristiano Ronaldo netted 17 more than any Man Utd colleague in 2007-08, though that came down to six in 2008-09. Arsenal could be deemed an exception, as Thierry Henry scored 12 and 16 more than any teammate in 2001-02 and 2003-04 respectively, though they didn’t win the title in 2002-03 – maybe they would have with more regular scorers, but we digress.
On average, the Premier League champions’ top scorer has netted 7.3 goals more than the team’s second-highest scorer that season. Therefore, players like Haaland in 2022-23 (+25), Ronaldo in 2007-08 (+17), Henry in 2003-04 (+16) and Mohamed Salah last term (+16) are significant outliers – they underline how rare true one-man goalscoring dominance is among title winners.
We can also consider the proportion of goals scored by Premier League champions’ top scorer.
On average, the successful teams have seen 26% of their goals scored by one player. But linked to the above, there are some notable individuals boosting that figure.
Proportion of Goals for Premier League Champions
Haaland’s 36 goals in 2022-23 accounted for 38.3% of City’s goals (36/94); Salah’s 29 last term equated to 33.7% (29/86). Ronaldo contributed 38.8% of United’s goals in 2007-08 (31/80), while Henry provided 41.1% of Arsenal’s in 2003-04. Leading the way, however, is Alan Shearer at Blackburn Rovers in 1994-95 (42.5% – 34/80).
Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be ignored that football has evolved. Fluid front threes were all the rage for a lot of the 2000s and 2010s, while the classic number nine is back in fashion now. Times change.
It’s also impossible to disregard that an individual player can have a massive impact by themselves (see Jamie Vardy). Often, that one superstar could be the difference between success and failure because it’s a simple fact that great players – specifically reliable goalscorers – make it easier to win football matches.
But even players as good as Haaland can’t be expected to provide all the goals for a team with title aspirations. The evidence very much suggests that teams who are successful in the Premier League generally have players across the pitch chipping in with goals.
There are exceptions, sure, though sustained success hasn’t tended to go hand-in-hand with prolonged dependency.
The data suggests successful teams mostly find a balance that sees one reliable finisher backed up by several frequent collaborators. A degree of reliance sometimes can’t be helped because throughout the history of football, forwards have tended to score more than others – but it’s about ensuring your season doesn’t fall apart if your main source of goals dries up; a Plan B, if you will.
Ultimately, then, it’s probably too early to say for certain if the City of 2025-26 are overly reliant on Haaland. It might seem that way now, but it’ll only take one or two of his teammates to step up for them to start blowing the opposition away again.
In the meantime, if you have to depend on one player, there aren’t many more reliable than Haaland.
Premier League Stats Opta
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