Mohamed Salah's record for the most goals in a 38-game Premier League season is at risk after Pep Guardiola confidently predicted that Erling Haaland would break it.
The Egyptian scored 32 times during the 2017/2018 campaign, his first season at Liverpool. But despite the current term being just 11 games old, Haaland already looks set to break Salah's effort with ease.
The Norwegian has notched an astonishing 17 goals so far this season, following his brace in Manchester City's win over Brighton. It means he only needs to score 16 games in his final 27 matches to surpass Salah, a feat City boss Guardiola believes he can do.
“You don’t have to be a genius. If he continues with this rhythm, the average every game he is going to break the record. But in football, maybe you score and then a few days you stop scoring, you don’t know," Guardiola said.
“He is happy when the team win and is not when we don’t win. All the strikers I have seen in my career like Samuel Eto’o, David Villa, Lionel Messi, [Robert] Lewandowski, Thomas Muller and Sergio Aguero have an incredible ambition to score a lot of goals.
"That’s normal. It has to be there. Dortmund and the period there helped him because of the manager he had, the mates he had. Hopefully in a few years he will be a better player thanks to the mates he plays with here.”
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While Haaland's natural talent is obvious, Guardiola has also highlighted the striker's work ethic. An he revealed that alongside Ruben Dias, he is one of the first to arrive and last to leave City's training ground each day.
“What has impressed me is that I knew he was a guy for big transitions and over 30 or 40 metres he was unstoppable. But I didn’t know how good he moves in small spaces in the box. In the end he has scored a lot of goals because he moves really well," he added.
“He is so intuitive and especially he makes movements I like a lot, as a striker, he goes away from the action to after be close to the ball. his type of movement is not easy for a striker. He's so smart in the right moments to make these movements.
“Apart from that, his work ethic, he’s one of the first to arrive at the training centre, quite similar to Ruben [Dias], and is one of the last to leave. He takes care of his body perfectly. He's well educated in the way he has to live as a professional and I think has the intention to be better.
“Of course, he’s scoring a lot of goals, and we are happy that last season he had a lot of problems here in Dortmund, he could not play regularly. This season, thanks to our physios, doctors and so on, he can play every three or four days. This is so important for us and for him, of course.”
