It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that Erling Haaland has made a blistering start to life in English football. Manchester City’s new £51m striker may have suffered a difficult debut including missing a late sitter in his side’s 3-1 Community Shield defeat to Liverpool in late July but he scored a brace at West Ham on his Premier League debut the following weekend and already has 14 goals in his first eight domestic games for the Etihad club.
The Norwegian’s hat-trick in last weekend’s 6-3 rout of local rivals Manchester United was his third treble in consecutive home games after also taking the match ball home following his exploits in Pep Guardiola’s side’s victories against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest over the last month, the first time such a feat has been achieved in the modern era.
A remarkable accomplishment which took the 22-year-old’s overall goals tally for his first 100 appearances in major European leagues to a mind-boggling 103. But impressive though Haaland’s hat-trick heroics are, they have been bettered by a Liverpool forward who once bagged trebles in three consecutive matches en route to one of the Reds’ most dramatic championship triumphs.
