Erling Haaland’s 26th Premier League goal of the season came against Arsenal on Wednesday. The Norwegian goal machine equals an achievement by former City striker Sergio Agüero with his goal at the Emirates Stadium.
Agüero scored 26 times for City in the 2014/15 season, making him the most prolific Citizen in a single Premier League season. Haaland now comes next to the Argentinian and has another fifteen matches to increase his number of goals. The most prolific top scorers in Premier League history (since 1992/93) were Andy Cole (1993/94) and Alan Shearer (1994/95) with 34 goals.
For Haaland, his counter is rising again after two league matches without goals. But City is not just about me. This was a team effort,” the Norwegian striker told the BBC. “Pep made an adjustment at half-time and it worked out well. We have a lot of quality in this team, but we have to show it every game, like today.”
“I am so proud of all the boys. We all agree that Arsenal was our best opponent this season. But we played great and took some very important points. We are now in it again,” said Haaland, who was served by Kevin De Bruyne on six of his 26 league goals. No player in the Premier League has assisted the same teammate more often this season.
The attacker responded jokingly to a question about his ‘goal drought’ in recent matches. “I haven’t scored for twenty minutes now, so I’m going to get back to work,” said the smiling Haaland. “I’m so happy right now. We really needed this. Now it’s up to us to put on a good series of games. We owe that to ourselves.”
Reactions from the Arsenal camp
Arteta has seen a lot of good. “Until their second feeling, we felt we could win here, but we gave away three goals, we gave away the game in the end. Some mistakes you can’t make at this level. But the level of play was very good tonight,” said the Spaniard, who is certainly not giving up the title race yet. On the contrary.
“I believe in it more now than before the game, if you look at how we played. They wanted to play a different game than how it ended. The faith is there, I can feel they still had faith in it. The difference was made in the penalty area. They get three chances and score three times, we don’t finish ours,” Arteta told the BBC.
Speaking to Amazon Prime, Ødegaard agreed with his manager, “The decision fell for both goals. And we were not sharp enough there. They did that better. We also played a great game, we did a lot of good, but we have to do better. That’s football: sometimes the chances go in, sometimes they don’t. But we have to improve on that, we have to be more clinical in attacking and defending.”
