Michael Reid – Opta | Start As You Mean To Go On – The Best Goalscoring Starts To A Premier League Season

AFTER the first (alarmingly early) international break of the season, the Premier League resumes this weekend.

One man is on a solo mission to make this term’s Fantasy Premier League as boring possible.

Erling Haaland has scored seven goals already this season, including two hat-tricks. Unsurprisingly, this breaks the record by any player in any team’s first three matches of a Premier League campaign.

The previous record was six scored by another Manchester City player – and no, not Sergio Agüero, you may be surprised to hear.

In fact, it was Edin Dzeko, who followed up goals against Swansea on MD1 and Bolton on MD2 with a four-goal haul in a 5-1 win against Spurs in Man City’s third match of 2011-12.

Premier League – Goals In Team’s First 3 MDs
Player	Season	Goals
Erling Haaland	2024-25	7
Edin Dzeko	2011-12	6
Robbie Fowler	1994-95	5
Wayne Rooney	2011-12	5
Raheem Sterling	2019-20	5
Teemu Pukki	2019-20	5
Dominic Calvert-Lewin	2020-21	5
Jamie Vardy	2020-21	5

With Brentford visiting the Etihad on Saturday, Haaland needs a brace to set a new outright record in a team’s opening four matches of a Premier League season. Not sure what was in the Manchester water in 2011-12, but the record for that comes not from Man City’s Dzeko, but Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney (8).

 

Like Haaland this season, Rooney also notched back-to-back hat-tricks in that run, against Arsenal on MD3 and then Bolton on MD4, to take his tally to eight.

Would you rule out Haaland scoring a third successive treble against Brentford? A hat-trick of hat-tricks in succession from the Norwegian (something no player has ever achieved in the Premier League) would see him hit double figures already in 2024-25.

Haaland already comfortably holds the record for the earliest a player has hit 10 goals into a Premier League campaign, hitting that figure in Man City’s first six games of 2022-23, his debut season in England. He has two games to score three goals and surpass even that ridiculous start.

For context, the next closest to Haaland for fewest matchdays to hit double figures is nine – by Les Ferdinand with Newcastle in 1995-96, Dominic Calvert-Lewin with Everton in 2020-21, and Mohamed Salah with Liverpool in 2021-22.

That said, we simply cannot do a ‘best goalscoring starts’ article without mentioning the infamous Mick Quinn. In 1992-93, Quinn technically matches Haaland’s feat of 10 goals in six appearances (and, perhaps more impressively, did so without a single hat-trick). However, his first six games of that campaign were Coventry’s 16th to 21st matches as they signed him from Newcastle in the November (the transfer window as we know it today didn’t exist in the ‘90s).

His dream start wouldn’t last. 40% of Quinn’s Premier League goals came in that six-game run. The same can’t be said of Haaland.

Although he is the runaway top scorer already in this season’s top-flight, there is another player who joins Haaland in scoring in all three matchdays so far.

Mo Salah might be without the hat-tricks, but he has scored exactly once in all three of Liverpool’s matches under new manager Arne Slot.

Both he and Haaland are, therefore, half-way to the record for longest run of consecutive appearances scored in from the start of a Premier League season.

Premier League – Scoring Runs From Start of Season
Player	Season	Apps	Scored	Goals
Mick Quinn	1992-93	First 6	6	10
Sergio Agüero	2019-20	First 6	6	8
Wayne Rooney	2011-12	First 5	5	9
Dominic Calvert-Lewin	2020-21	First 5	5	7
Ian Marshall	1993-94	First 5	5	5
José Antonio Reyes	2004-05	First 5	5	5

Quinn is again our joint-record holder here with that six-game run in the inaugural Premier League season, this time alongside Agüero, who scored in his first six appearances of 2019-20 – which strangely enough is the last season Man City did not go on to win the title. You’ll no doubt notice Haaland’s absence in the table above – while he did score 10 goals in his first six games of 2022-23, he didn’t net in all of them consecutively, drawing a blank on MD2 that term despite his side putting four past Bournemouth. He is human, after all.

 

A word, too, on Luis Suárez. In 2013-14, the Uruguayan scored 19 goals in his first 12 appearances of the campaign. While he missed Liverpool’s first five games of that season through suspension, it’s a goalscoring run unlike any the Premier League has ever seen. Even Haaland’s highest 12-match run for goals in the competition is 18. For Suárez to do this from his (staggered) start of the season is a remarkable feat.

With seven goals in three matches so far, Haaland therefore needs a further 12 in his next nine appearances to match Suárez (or 13 to achieve the best 20-goal run in Premier League history). This is well within his reach, with Haaland averaging over a goal-per-game in the competition.

---

Please remember to gamble responsibly. Visit our Safer Gambling section for more information, help and advice.