Kane would score as many goals as Haaland for Man City, claims Shearer
FT Desk
- Updated: 13 Oct 2022 21:39 BST
- 3 min read
Erling Haaland has scored 20 goals in just 13 games since swapping Borussia Dortmund for Manchester City this summer, but Alan Shearer thinks Harry Kane would have been posting similar numbers if he's moved last season.
England captain Kane was widely expected to join City from Tottenham Hotspur in a £127 million (€150m) deal last summer, but the Premier League champions instead spent the bulk of that budget on Aston Villa's Jack Grealish, and Kane stayed put.
Perhaps City already had an eye on the long-term successor to Sergio Aguero as their leading No.9, and Haaland - seven years Kane's junior - joined for a relative snip at €60m in June.
Three games, three goals. Erling Haaland makes the Premier League look easy.pic.twitter.com/BJTkUPOJQP
— Football Transfers (@Transfersdotcom) August 22, 2022
Fifteen of Haaland's 20 City goals have come in the Premier League, scored at a rate of one every 50.3 minutes. He is seven goals ahead of Kane, who still has an entirely respectable eight goals from nine games so far. Shearer thinks the teams they play for is the difference.
"He's bloody good, Erling Haaland," the Newcastle and England legend wrote in his column for the Athletic, before outlining the Norwegian's recent goalscoring record.
"But if Harry was in this City team, he would be scoring as many goals as Erling has.
'This is dreamland…'
"This is dreamland for any top forward. I've said it all along - a top goalscorer in this City team should score 40 goals. If Erling stays fit then he'll get that and maybe even some more.
"Harry's record tells you that he would do that, too. There's no doubt what Pep thinks about Harry and what the vast majority of other people think about him as well. He is a top goalscorer: he's got eight in nine league games so far, which we'd be talking about a lot more if it wasn't for Erling."
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Shearer's 34 goals scored in the 1994/95 Premier League season - when he fired Blackburn Rovers to the title - remains a single-season record; one shared with Andy Cole who managed the same with Newcastle in 1993/94.
If Haaland keeps scoring at the same rate he has done so far, he would have 67 Premier League goals by the end of the current campaign, assuming he plays every minute still available.
