In the 70th minute, Jack Grealish sent Erling Haaland deep with a smart through ball. The Norwegian Ortega came face to face with the West Ham goalkeeper and beat him with a beautiful marking ball. Haaland wrote history: Never before has a player scored 35 goals in one season in the English Premier League like him.
The record was previously held by Andy Cole, who scored 34 goals for Newcastle United in the 1993-94 season, and Alan Shearer, who did the same for Blackburn Rovers in 1994-95. An interesting detail is that the two Englishmen needed more matches to achieve this record. The Premier League at that time consisted of 22 teams, and thus 42 matches were played.
Given the limited number of matches he played (38), it seemed that the record was forever out of reach, until Haaland left for the Premier League. The Norwegian needed only 31 matches to reach 35 against West Ham United (3-0) on Wednesday evening.
With the win over the London side, Manchester City finally overtook Arsenal and appears to be heading towards a third title in a row. While Pep Guardiola’s team has been far behind Arsenal for a long time. In recent weeks, Mikel Arteta’s side have faced a crisis in form and have been outclassed by The Citizens once again.
Not an all-time record yet
As previously written, the English Premier League has only been in existence since 1992, and before that the highest level in the English language was known as the First Division. To break all-time records, Haaland must keep scoring.
To break Manchester City’s record, the Norwegian super striker needs three more goals. Tommy Johnson scored 38 goals in the 1928-29 season. To break the absolute record, Haaland still needs to score more than four goals per match. Everton striker Dixie Dean set the record in 1927-28 by scoring 60 goals.
Haaland thanked his fellow players for this record with a speech:
Where do you follow sports news?
You can follow the latest sporting news from football to cycling and from snooker to biathlon here on Eurosport.
