Before the season started, I wrote a story about how Manchester City striker Erling Haaland wouldn't win the Premier League Golden Boot.
His preseason odds for the award, via ESPN Bet, were minus-150, which comes out to a 60% implied probability of leading the league in goals. On the one hand, any one player being the odds-on favorite to score the most goals in a league as wealthy as the Premier League before a ball is even kicked seemed absurd. Soccer is too random, injuries are so common and there's just so much unpredictable stuff that changes our expectations over the course of a 38-game season.
At the same time, the odds also seemed absurd in the other direction, too. Were we really supposed to believe that there was a 40% chance that Haaland -- who scored 63 goals in his first two(!) Premier League seasons -- wouldn't score more than anyone else? I mean, didn't the Norway international just have the whole summer off while everyone else was grinding themselves into dust at the Euros and Copa America? And didn't he just turn 24, the age when center forwards typically enter their prime?
Four games in, it all looks pretty silly. Haaland has nine goals -- more than every other Premier League team, including Chelsea, who scored six goals vs. Wolves. No other player has scored more than three. And so, after fewer than 400 minutes of game time, Haaland's odds have already leapt all the way up to minus-800 -- or an implied probability of 89%.
Barring injury, Haaland is no longer competing against his peers. He's battling with history -- his own, and some of the greatest players of all time. (Chasing down Lionel Messi's record of 50 goals in a single season might be something in his sights, for example.) So, ahead of City's clash with Arsenal on Sunday, we have to ask: how many goals could he realistically score?
