Erling Haaland has flown out of the blocks this season.
The 24-year-old’s double for Manchester City against Brentford on Saturday brought his tally for 2024-25 to nine goals — the most by any player in the first four games of a Premier League season.
Back-to-back three-goal hauls against West Ham United and Ipswich Town mean Haaland has managed eight hat-tricks, the Premier League’s joint fourth-highest total despite having only played in the competition for just over two years. For those who suggested the Norway international’s form dipped last season, when he was affected by a series of injuries, he appears to have taken it personally.
Haaland’s goalscoring touch can often resemble a playground bully — promoted Ipswich might have asked him to pick on someone his own size — but his record shows he is not afraid of the traditional ‘Big Six’. He has scored against every Premier League team he has faced since his debut for City in August 2022.
Yet his ease of scoring against teams such as West Ham and Ipswich begs a question: do all goals have equal value?
Those two he got against Brentford, who have finished 13th, ninth and 16th in the Premier League in the past three seasons, were impressive, but would a single goal to help beat title rivals Arsenal this Sunday carry more weight?
The Athletic has previously explored the value of a goal — determined by factors such as the timing and importance of a given strike — and adjusting the value of a player’s metrics by the strength of whichever league they are in is now common practice.
But can we go deeper and adjust for the specific opponents being faced?
First, the methodology.
We can measure a side’s strength using their ClubElo rating, which allocates points when teams win. More points are given for beating tougher sides and fewer for dealing with easier opponents. Simply, higher ratings equate to a greater quality.
By calculating each club’s ClubElo rating when the game concerned was played, we can gauge the proportional difference in team quality to adjust the value of a player’s goal.
For example, each of Haaland’s three against Ipswich last month was ‘worth’ approximately 0.8 goals, given the gap in quality between the two teams. By contrast, Sammie Szmodics’ one for the visitors in their 4-1 defeat at the Etihad Stadium that day was worth 1.3 goals based on it coming against significantly stronger opposition.
Aggregating this across all players since the start of the 2018-19 season, we can sand down the edges of the most prolific goalscorers’ tallies to see who might have been padding their statistics.
A 15-goal swing means Mohamed Salah’s haul of 126 would be worth 111 goals, while Haaland’s 72 would have an adjusted value of 60. Notwithstanding their impressive goalscoring records, those two players’ total tallies have the biggest deficits when adjusting for the quality of the opposition.
Those playing for the strongest teams can only reduce the value of their goals against weaker opposition — so the system is more likely to handicap Haaland and Salah — but this analysis can help us to spot those strikers with a knack for finding the net against the better sides.
Ollie Watkins is not penalised, since he is often on the scoresheet against clubs considered superior to Aston Villa — including Arsenal, Liverpool (five goals in both cases), City (two), and Tottenham Hotspur (three). His 61 Premier League goals have been worth… well, exactly 61 goals after adjusting their value since he joined Villa four years ago.
Despite Everton’s goalscoring profligacy in recent years, their Dominic Calvert-Lewin is another to show consistent value in his goals — scoring against lowly opposition but also when facing City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal.
If we were to apply this method to last season’s race for the Premier League Golden Boot, the list was a lot tighter. Haaland still topped the chart but his 27 goals were ‘worth’ a more modest 22.9, only just edging in front of Cole Palmer, whose adjusted value equated to 21.6 goals for Chelsea.
Who has added the most value to their goals in this period?
In relative terms, Luton Town’s Elijah Adebayo stepped up the most in his goal output, with an average increase of 12 per cent per goal — or a strike that’s ‘worth’ over 1.1 goals by this measure. Of the 10 goals Adebayo scored in last season’s Premier League, seven were against Chelsea, Newcastle United, Brighton & Hove Albion, Arsenal and City, which points to his ability to mix it among the best.
Nottingham Forest’s Taiwo Awoniyi comes out favourably too, adding nearly eight per cent extra value to his 14 goals — boosted by three against Arsenal, two versus Chelsea, and the one that beat Liverpool at the City Ground in October 2022.
Leandro Trossard and Jack Grealish also make the list for their output at previous clubs Brighton and Villa. An ability to stand out against the stronger opposition can be crucial and would have played a role in the pair earning moves to Arsenal and City.
Another latest example of that is Dominic Solanke, whose goals for Bournemouth added five per cent extra value if you consider the strength of the opposition. Solanke is now at the top end of the Premier League table after his August move to Tottenham, and it was clear he was capable of operating at a level above Bournemouth (who have finished 12th and 15th since promotion back to the domestic elite in 2022) last season.
Goals are every striker’s currency, but like all players, they are subject to exchange rates that vary across borders.
Adjusting an individual’s output relative to other leagues is commonplace, but The Athletic has previously shown that inequality exists within leagues.
Feyenoord’s Santiago Gimenez was close to a move to Forest in the summer, after his 23 goals were third-most in the Dutch Eredivisie last season. However, as six of those came against struggling trio Excelsior, Almere City and Volendam (two of whom were relegated), the value of his goals is worth reconsidering.
The same could be said of Sporting Lisbon’s Viktor Gyokeres, who made light work of his step up from the second-tier English Championship to the Primeira Liga with 29 goals in 33 league appearances — more than any other player in Portugal.
Many have argued the 26-year-old Swede is worthy of a move to the Premier League (he was on Brighton’s books from 2018-21 but never played for them in the top flight among his eight appearances), but the gulf in quality between Sporting and relegated sides Vizela and Chaves (whom he scored a combined six times against last season) is substantial.
If you need the point hammering home, just look at Darwin Nunez’s goalscoring transition from Benfica to Liverpool, where 26 league goals for the Lisbon club in his 2021-22 farewell season are yet to be matched — combined — by his subsequent two and a bit years on Merseyside, where he’s on 20 in the Premier League.
Even an analysis as simple as this suggests all goals are not equal.
When it comes to Haaland, adjusting the value of his goals was an attempt to make him appear human.
Has it worked?
(Top photo: Michael Regan via Getty Images)
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