Erling Haaland may be leading the race for the Premier League Golden Boot again this season, but his horror miss in Manchester City’s win over Manchester United at the weekend perhaps showed a sign of his game that we’ve overlooked a little.
There’s no doubt the prolific Norway international gets a lot of goals in this Man City side that creates so many chances for him, but it seems he does also take a lot of shots that aren’t put away.
Data from Net World Sports shows that Haaland is currently under-performing his xG a lot this season, whereas Tottenham forward Son Heung-min is actually incredible clinical as he’s over-performing his goal count from the chances he’s had.
See below for the data on the best and worst finishers in the Premier League so far this season…
Haaland stats a worry for Man City in tight title race with Liverpool and Arsenal?
City fans will no doubt be surprised to see these figures, but perhaps it also shows the limitations of xG data.
Anyone watching the game can see Haaland is absolutely deadly in front of goal, and a big miss like that one against Man Utd is hardly a regular occurrence for the former Borussia Dortmund man.
And even if Haaland isn’t firing, MCFC have so many world class talents like Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden they can also fall back on to deliver the occasional goal from midfield, so Pep Guardiola’s reigning treble winners will surely remain favourites to possibly go on and win the lot again this season.
It will be interesting to see how these numbers look at the end of the season as well, with Haaland missing some of this campaign through injury, meaning he might not have quite hit top form yet anyway.