Having Erling Haaland in the Manchester City squad is basically a 'Football Manager' cheat code, according to The Independent's Dan McDonnell.
The Manchester City striker broke the Premier League record for most goals in a single season on Wednesday night when City beat West Ham 3-0.
In the 70th minute of that game, the Norwegian scored his 35th league goal of the campaign to move past Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole's previous best of 34.
Haaland had already set a new high in a 38-game season, surpassing Mohamed Salah's 32 goals for Liverpool in 2017-18. He now holds the overall record, however with five games left in the season, he could yet add to the total.
While he is still a way off the single season record across all competitions of 60 goals, set by Dixie Dean in the 1927-28 season, Erling Haaland's form in front of goal is frightening in his debut Premier League season.
'Cheat code' Erling Haaland
Speaking on The Football Show, McDonnell reacted to the season that the young Norwegian has had.
"Those are crazy numbers," McDonnell said. "It's like people playing Football Manager when they were younger, it's like cheat code stuff.
"You'd have these players that have been rigged to be excessively good. This whole thing of playing 20 something games and having more goals than appearances.
"Ronaldo and Messi have probably already rewrote the convention on that, but the Haaland stuff, they're scary stats!"
While Haaland has scored a scary amount of goals this season, McDonnell wonders whether this is only the start of his record-breaking Premier League run, or if time and injuries will catch up with the young superstar.
"Is this as good a run as he'll get?" McDonnell pondered. "Will he ever have an injury-free campaign that's comparable. I don't think he has missed much really."
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