The stats that say Haaland will run away with Golden Boot

With nine goals in his first seven Premier League games, Manchester City striker Erling Haaland has started the season on fire.

While it is not his best start to a campaign – he scored 11 goals in his first seven games in 2022-23 and 10 last season – it still puts him three goals ahead in the early running for this season’s Premier League Golden Boot.

Of course, injury could definitively intervene in the destination of the Golden Boot, but there are two reasons why Haaland is such a strong favourite for the award so early.

First, the number of goals he has already scored – and, just as importantly, the number and quality of chances he is getting. And second, the slow start his usual rivals for the prize have made.

A player’s expected goals number (xG) signifies how many goals a Premier League player has historically scored from the number and quality of chances he has had.

It is not a number randomly picked by statistics boffins, but by Premier League history.

And if we look at players’ xG in the Premier League so far this season from normal play, the Norway forward is getting so many more good opportunities to score than anyone else.

That is demonstrated by breaking down the number and quality of chances that players have had in the top flight so far.

Haaland has taken 29 shots so far this season, 12 more than any other player.

That is actually not that remarkable for him – he had actually taken more non-penalty shots at this point in the last two seasons (30 in 2023-24 and 34 in 2024-25).

What is, however, unprecedented even for him is the quality of chances he has had this season. His shots have had a xG value of 0.27 on average.

What that figure means is that players have historically converted the shots he has had at a rate of 27%.

Of players to take at least 10 shots, only Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez has had easier chances to score on average – thanks to a couple of tap-ins against West Ham and Brighton.

Haaland’s xG of 0.27 is much higher than the 0.17 xG per shot he had at the start of last season.

Starting a season so strongly is, as mentioned above, not unusual for Haaland. After seven games last season he had scored 10 goals – four more than anyone else and six more than Mohamed Salah.

But it was the Liverpool forward who won the Golden Boot with 29 goals, seven more than the Manchester City striker.

In the new campaign, while Haaland has started in blistering form, Salah has scored half the number of goals and had half the chances (xG) than at this stage last season.

It is not just Salah who has started slowly either. If we look at the top 11 scorers in the Premier League last season, Haaland has scored as many goals as the other 10 players put together so far.

While Haaland looks the clear favourite for the Premier League Golden Boot, what about the European Golden Shoe that is awarded to the player with the most goals in Europe’s top-five leagues?

That race is far more competitive at this early stage because Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe have also started in great form, with 11 and nine goals respectively.

The fact Haaland has scored so many times and has the highest xG of the three without yet taking any penalties makes him the favourite.