Exceptional start of the season for Erling Haaland but not unexpected

The football fans are quite fortunate that we are witnessing the rise of Erling Haaland. An exceptional athlete. Forbes magazine dug a bit deeper in order to better understand the outrageous start of his Manchester City stay.

There is hardly a football fan who had not heard of Haaland even when he was at RedBull Salzburg during the 2019/2020 season. His individual skills place him above players like Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema and Robert Lewandowski in terms of conversion rate: one out of every four shots is a goal. His statistics prove without a doubt that he has the qualities to be one of the greatest attackers in history. 

Forbes continues to share that The Athletic considered how Haaland fares in Manchester City compared to other strikers. City being one of the chances creation machine, the only think they missed last season was the person to convert these chances into results. The Athletic had calculated that Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus converted less than half of the big chances created for them last season, while Haaland converts about two-thirds. 

The article goes even further showing that Haaland is very effective in converting even difficult situations into goals. That is easily represented by expected goal (xG) metric. His xG was 15 and he netted 22.

This is a player who so far has shown very clear headed and meticulous approach to his career development, which combined with his skills and young age can make us believe that we are in the presence of greatness. We can only hope that we will be enjoying his performance for quite a while.