We're taking a look at how Erling Haaland, the Norwegian superstar has made himself so efficient in front of goal.
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00:00 Hello everyone, Adam here again from 442. Now, Erling Haaland, you might have heard
00:10 of the fella. He's been pulling up trees in the Premier League for the past 18 months
00:14 and he's recently just hit 50 goals on the weekend against Liverpool. No one's surprised.
00:19 I'm not, you're not. It was coming. I think we all knew by September 2022 really. So the
00:25 fact it's happened now, it was inevitable. Andy Cole did it in 65 games, Erling Haaland
00:31 just 48, beating him by 17 games. He could have taken it till March without scoring a
00:36 goal and he still would have beaten it had he have just scored a goal in March. So ridiculous.
00:43 He's got the best goals to game ratio and the best conversion rate in Premier League
00:47 history with a conversion rate of 28.7%. So not too shabby. So we're going to break down
00:53 all of his goals, how they have been scored, who's assisted them, whereabouts on the pitch
00:57 they've come from, how many touches he's taken. And we're going to find out the average Erling
01:02 Haaland goal out of the 50 that he has scored so far. So let's go on. So the data breakdown
01:08 reads as follows. He has scored 36 goals with his left foot, which I mean is pretty expected.
01:12 He is a left footed striker, so that's pretty customary. He scored six goals with his right
01:18 foot on his weaker side, seven with his head and one with his ****. Now it should be to
01:24 no one's surprise that the most common assister for Erling Haaland has been Kevin De Bruyne,
01:28 as it is for every player who wears a blue shirt, because that man will just find you,
01:33 even if you're bad at football. If you have two yards of space, you'll get a chance with
01:37 him. But firstly, before we break down Kevin De Bruyne and how he has serviced Erling Haaland,
01:42 let's look at some of the rarer goals that Erling Haaland has actually scored for City
01:46 in the Premier League so far. So one thing you might have noticed about Erling Haaland
01:49 is he doesn't really like to touch the ball for a footballer. For someone as good as him
01:54 and with as many goals as him, he rarely, rarely ever has a sniff of it, which is actually
01:58 testament to how good he is. But a rarer type of goal he scored is two from outside the
02:02 box, one away at Wolves last season and one at home to Brighton this season. One on his
02:07 left foot and one on his right, which just goes to show that he has got it in his locker,
02:12 that slight bit of ball carrying when need be and when the defence are a bit more pegged
02:16 back than they usually are when they're preoccupied with Erling. So he does have the ability to
02:20 drive forward and beat the goalkeeper from range, should it be required every now and
02:24 then. You also might be thinking, well, how does he score his headers? It must be from
02:29 Kevin De Bruyne. And while that might be true in a few instances, we've seen more recently
02:33 with De Bruyne's injury this season that he's actually been scoring a lot of goals now where
02:38 the ball's floated over to him this season by the likes of Jack Grealish, Julian Alvarez,
02:43 Mateus Nunes. There's a lot of hang time with the ball in the air now. And what he's added
02:47 to his game, which he didn't have as much of last season, is that ability to sort of
02:51 have that, I guess you could say Ronaldo-esque, but certainly like an NBA basketball type
02:56 jump where he has a load of hang time suspended in the air for seconds on end and then can
03:00 power it, head it downwards into the goal. We've seen a few of them this season against
03:04 the likes of Sheffield United away, which Jack Grealish assisted, and Nottingham Forest
03:10 at home, which Mateus Nunes assisted. That was his first assist for the club. And of
03:14 course there was the crotch goal at Stamford Bridge, which was unorthodox. Now I'm not
03:18 going to really start drawing graphs to, not drawing, like analysing, I'm digging myself
03:23 a hole, analysing that one because you know, he was right place at the right time. The
03:27 ball was, ball was perfect. He had to get any part of his body on it to score. They
03:31 all count. They all count. We're not going to go too far into that one.
03:34 Of course as well, a larger part of his goal scoring, but not one that's particularly on
03:38 the pitch and in play has been his penalty taking, which he's pretty proficient at. He's
03:42 missed one in the league so far at Sheffield United where he hit the foot off the post.
03:45 Other than that, they've all sort of been smashed past the keeper. He's got a very sort
03:49 of no-nonsense approach to his penalty taking ability as well. So another string to his
03:54 bow.
03:55 Anyway, let's get into the meat of the video now, really. Again, all right, that's not
04:00 a joke about the Chelsea goal either. So his most common assist up, Kevin De Bruyne. How
04:06 has he done it? Where's it been from on the pitch? What makes KDB so special, but also
04:10 what makes Erling Haaland work so well with KDB? Well, as we know, Kevin De Bruyne likes
04:15 to operate in this sort of half space area of the pitch. We've seen him do it way, way
04:19 before Erling Haaland was a Man City player. He's been doing it for years and he seems
04:23 to be able to find that sort of, I guess that half space at the back post, which used to
04:28 be attacked by Raheem Sterling in seasons gone by, but he's now able to be attacked
04:32 by Erling Haaland in a slightly different way. Because if you remember Raheem Sterling
04:35 used to make his run sort of from that back post position and ghosting behind, if you
04:40 will. Whereas Erling Haaland now with his raw physical ability, his athleticism, his
04:45 pace, just his general physical prowess allows him to actually just get ahead of a defender
04:50 one-on-one on countless occasions and beat them to the ball. Whether that be an acrobatic
04:54 volley, a header, you name it, a tap in, he will always be there.
05:00 Some of the best examples of this were actually earlier on in Erling Haaland's Manchester
05:03 City career. I say earlier on, he's only been 18 months, but in like the first six
05:07 months of when he was at the club. So Aston Villa away early on in the season last year,
05:12 Kevin De Bruyne again, floated cross to the back post. Erling Haaland was found there
05:17 unoccupied and ready to tap it into an empty net. Then a couple of weeks after that, they
05:21 played Manchester United in that 6-3 thrashing in which this was probably, I think, the best
05:26 assist of the duo so far, really, where De Bruyne had it in that infamous half space
05:31 where he occupies so often and found Erling Haaland with a sort of a cross you could say,
05:36 but it was also sort of hybridised with a through ball, just a perfectly weighted, floated
05:40 through ball in a position where both De Gea and Martinez couldn't get to the ball.
05:45 And Erling Haaland was outstretched, but still found the net in what seemed like a pretty
05:48 simple finish for him, but it wouldn't be for any normal striker. Then also a couple
05:53 months later from a similar position, De Bruyne with a textbook cross and Erling Haaland beating
05:58 his man and heading it into the net. That is the position in which Erling Haaland has
06:02 really bared the most fruit when partnered with Kevin De Bruyne in this team. And I think
06:07 it's going to continue when De Bruyne is back from injury.
06:10 Another absolutely crazy thing, considering that he's got 50 goals in the Premier League
06:14 already, is how many touches he averages for each goal that he scores. So when he receives
06:18 the ball, how many touches does he actually take before putting the ball in the back of
06:22 the net? It's usually one. And his average is actually 1.3 over the 50 goals that he
06:28 scored. So 1.3 average touches per goal is absolutely frightening. So why is this the
06:33 case? Well, the first thing to note is actually something a bit broader and why Manchester
06:37 City are such a good team in general, because what Erling Haaland has done since coming
06:41 in is he's not actually had to touch the ball because his presence just preoccupies
06:45 three or four defenders at a time, leaving space for the likes of Jack Grealish, Phil
06:49 Foden, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez last season, Kevin De Bruyne, you name it. It frees up
06:54 the space for the creators in the team, meaning that all he has to do is be in the right place
06:58 at the right time for when that chance is created at the opportune moment.
07:02 This is also why he actually managed to rack up seven assists last season, because he was
07:07 preoccupying space for other people, meaning people could play off him, he could hold the
07:10 ball up and feed someone else in with a one-two. For instance, I remember Ilkay Gundogan scoring
07:15 in Erling Haaland's first assist for Manchester City last season was one of these one-twos
07:20 where he sucked three or four defenders in, Gundogan made the second man run and he was
07:23 fed through and finished one on one. There were several instances like that last season
07:27 where Erling Haaland was able to turn provider by just being a presence.
07:31 But the fact that for the vast majority of goals that I'm looking at here, Erling Haaland
07:35 has only had one touch for them. It means that the Man City players around him are really
07:38 just creating the optimal chance for him to score to the point where it only needs one
07:42 touch. He never really has to set himself up. He's never in a phone box with defenders
07:47 around him where he's got to dig the ball out of his feet and get a shot off like perhaps
07:50 Aguero used to have to. He's always just bearing down on goal. It's either a header,
07:55 a finish at the back post or a one v one where he might just have to take one touch.
07:59 But even then with the one on ones, you only really actually have to look at Erling Haaland's
08:03 Premier League debut at West Ham away to see this as well in full effect, because the second
08:08 goal he scored in that game, he was played through by Kevin De Bruyne and most strikers
08:12 in an orthodox fashion there, especially if they're left footed, would have perhaps taken
08:15 a touch on their right to set themselves up on the left or maybe just snatched on it on
08:19 their right foot if they're not as good as Erling Haaland.
08:22 But Erling Haaland, as you can sort of see here, in an almost Thierry Henry-esque manner,
08:28 he opens his body up and fires it to the left hand side of the goal and it only required
08:32 one touch despite the fact that he had four, five, six seconds to really think about that
08:36 finish. So it's the way Erling Haaland finishes his chances in general. He makes sure his
08:42 body positioning is always right to be on the half turn, to beat a man, to use that
08:46 athleticism and power to get ahead of someone. Most of the time with city players and the
08:51 goals that Haaland scored, it doesn't even have to be a pinpoint pass to him, it just
08:55 simply has to be put in an area and he will get a flailing limb on it.
09:00 The question this begs now, now he's scored 50 goals and he'll probably have scored 100
09:04 this time next year, can he improve? How does he improve? How do you make these stats even
09:10 better? And I actually think there's a way that you can.
09:13 Now hear me out because I know he is absolutely world class and this isn't necessarily a dig
09:18 at him, I think he's young and if you think about most strikers, your Luis Suarez's, Karim
09:23 Benzema's, Robert Lewandowski's, Harry Kane's even, they all come into their prime or all
09:27 have come into their prime around the age of 30 and this guy is just 23. So there is
09:32 definitely things that he can improve on and add to his game.
09:36 And I think it's his cross shot finishing. Now hear me out. Sometimes, and I've noticed
09:41 this from just being a city fan and having watched him at games for the last 18 months,
09:46 even though I've just said there he optimises his chances and they're all one touch finishes,
09:51 he does sometimes because of the volume of chances he gets, he wants to snatch at shots
09:55 and he takes them too early and it's particularly from a cross goal position.
09:59 So there's this graph here which I think actually tells a very, very telling story. So as you
10:04 can see, the stars are the goals and the shots are just the dots and then the amber hue,
10:09 the more red it is, the more of a gilt edge goal scoring chance that is. So the yellow
10:13 shots there, lower XG shots you could say, for the nerds out there.
10:17 But as you can see here, he does convert far more chances from the centre of the box or
10:22 from the right hand side of the box where he's opening his body up like I said. So the
10:26 one on ones that he does get from the left hand side of the box where he has to shoot
10:29 a cross goal to the right hand side of the goal, he actually converts far fewer of them,
10:34 only about 50% of those chances, which is still obviously impressive, but not the same
10:39 as where he converts centrally or to the left side of the goal where it's much, much more
10:43 proficient.
10:44 And you only actually have to look at the record breaking 50th goal against Liverpool
10:47 last weekend to realise this, because if you actually look at the finish itself and the
10:52 position it's from, yes, he is from the left side of the box and he shoots a cross
10:55 goal, but the shot was a bit scuffed and a little bit, I don't know, rushed wouldn't
11:00 be what I'd say. He did take a touch to set himself up and he had to snatch at it because
11:04 the defenders were bearing down, but he didn't get that sort of clean, assured connection
11:08 that a Harry Kane perhaps would, or even like, I'm going to say it, like a Jamie Vardy.
11:13 He was a very assured finisher where a lot of the time it was just rifle, roof of the
11:16 net, job done. Harland a lot of the time, he seems to, from that position in the box,
11:22 that left-hand side, get the ball kind of stuck under his feet. He might sometimes try
11:26 a chip shot in these instances, which has sometimes worked for him in the past, but
11:29 a lot of the time these shots just seem to bobble or drag wide of that far post.
11:33 So if he can iron up on these and score a few more cross shot chances, then I actually
11:38 think we'll see his numbers go up by 10, 15 goals a season, which is quite scary and
11:44 also quite a realistic prospect, because if you think about how good he is, it is actually
11:48 something that he could very, very easily improve on.
11:51 So with all that said, out of the 50 Premier League goals, what is the average Erling Harland
11:55 goal? Well, it reads as follows. A left-footed strike from an average distance of 9.64 yards
12:01 away, assisted by Kevin De Bruyne via a cross from the left-hand side of the pitch. He'd
12:07 average 1.3 touches to turn that chance to goal. It will be scored at the Etihad Stadium
12:12 in a 3-0 home win, and the average minute that he's scored on has been the 47th. So
12:18 there you go, that is the average Erling Harland goal out of his 50 so far, which is pretty
12:24 impressive.
12:25 So there we go, a little bit of Erling Harland propaganda, because why not? I don't think
12:29 any fan of any team in the league can really say that he's a fraud. I don't want to see
12:33 anyone saying in the comments that he's a tapping merchant, because, all right, he kind
12:36 of is, but that's the sign of a good player. Ruud van Nistelrooy was, and look how he turned
12:40 out. Great striker. So there you go.
12:42 But let me know in the comments whether you think Erling Harland can improve his game.
12:47 So obviously we know he's a good player, but let me know where you think he can improve,
12:50 because he's got 50 goals now, we know more are going to follow. How can he get even better?
12:56 Let me know that.
12:57 There we go then. Don't forget to subscribe. We like to see that number going up, growing
13:03 by the week. I have been Adam Monk. I hope you've had a very, very lovely day. I hope
13:07 you've enjoyed the video, and I'll see you very, very soon. Goodbye.