Erling Haaland Reaches Another Goal Landmark ...Middle East

Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition looks at Erling Haaland, long-range shots, and early title wins.

And then there were four.

The weekend’s FA Cup quarter-finals saw all four away teams emerge victorious and set up semi-finals at Wembley Stadium next month between Nottingham Forest and Manchester City, and Crystal Palace and Aston Villa.

One of the more notable stories out of those games involved Erling Haaland, and we’ll be diving further into that in this week’s newsletter.

We’ll also be looking at shot distance, and revealing a trend that has been fairly consistent since records began, as well as discussing some of the Premier League’s most-memorable long-rangers.

Our Ask Opta question looks across Europe’s top five leagues, while this week’s quiz reflects on the FA Cup.

Oh, and if you spot any inaccuracies in this week’s SVQ, they’re definitely just April Fool’s jokes… Yeah, let’s go with that.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe below for free to receive SVQ every Tuesday.

STAT – Haaland Hits 30 Again

It feels like a while since we spoke about Erling Haaland in SVQ.

The man who is to goals what Garfield is to lasagne has had a quieter season than usual, as have Manchester City, but in typical fashion, a ‘quiet’ campaign for Haaland still surpasses the best from most.

He saw a first-half penalty saved in City’s FA Cup quarter-final win at Bournemouth, but with his equalising goal on Sunday, the former Salzburg and Borussia Dortmund striker brought up his 30th in all competitions this season.

Haaland has reached 30 in just 40 games, having scored 52 in 53 in his debut campaign at City, before managing 38 in 45 last season. It means he’s shown a level of goalscoring consistency in his first three campaigns as a Premier League player that’s not been seen for over 20 years.

The 24-year-old became the first player to score 30+ goals in all competitions in each of his first three seasons while playing for a Premier League club since Ruud van Nistelrooy for Manchester United from 2001-02 to 2003-04.

As coincidence would have it, Man City play Van Nistelrooy’s Leicester City on Wednesday, but unfortunately for Haaland, he won’t be able to feature. He came off at the Vitality Stadium early in the second half and was seen leaving the ground on crutches with a protective boot on his left foot.

Having signed a contract at the Etihad Stadium until 2034, though, who knows how many more goals he’ll get for the club in the long run? If Haaland manages at least 30 goals in each of those seasons as well, it means he will have a minimum of 390 goals for the club to his name.

A big ask, granted, but you never know.

VIZ – The Long-Rangers

Those of us of a certain vintage remember some of the great Premier League ‘Goal of the Month’ competitions from the 1990s and 2000s.

Every month on Match of the Day you’d be treated to goals from the likes of Alan Shearer, Matt Le Tissier, David Beckham, Dennis Bergkamp, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard among others, fired in from all distances.

Goals arrowed into the top corner from 30 yards feel rarer these days, and that’s because, well, they are.

In fact, shooting from long range altogether is getting less frequent. Almost year on year since records began in 2003-04, the percentage of shots attempted in the Premier League that have been from outside the penalty area has been dropping.

Heading into Matchday 30 this week, the 2024-25 Premier League season is averaging just 31.7% of shots being from outside the box, the lowest on record.

It was at its highest in 2005-06 (48.2%), with Lampard (90) and Wayne Rooney (85) leading the way for the most shots from outside the box from individual players that season. In fact, Rooney only scored once from outside the area in the league in 2005-06, with Lampard finding the net six times, so perhaps the Man Utd striker should have been a bit more cautious with his efforts.

Lampard also holds the record for the most shots from outside the box in a single Premier League campaign (since 2003-04), with 126 attempts in the 2008-09 season. He only scored from two of them, though he isn’t the most inefficient shooter on record.

Jay-Jay Okocha was admired for his outrageous skill and lighting a game up, and he also managed some spectacular goals during his spell at Bolton Wanderers. Just not in the 2003-04 Premier League campaign.

The Nigeria international attempted 118 shots from outside the box that season, failing to score with any of them. In fact, Okocha didn’t score full stop in the Premier League that campaign, also unable to find the net with any of his 19 shots inside the box. In fairness we should point out that he scored six times the following season, including twice from 77 shots outside the box.

The most goals ever scored by a Premier League player from outside the penalty area in a season was Gareth Bale in 2012-13, with the then Tottenham Hotspur star firing in nine times from 98 attempts.

Bale aside, shooting from distance, while occasionally spectacular, is an inefficient way of scoring. That likely explains why teams are trying to get closer and closer to goal before having a pop.

Brentford have averaged the shortest distance to goal from their shots this season in the Premier League, while high-flying Liverpool and Arsenal are second and third respectively.

You can read more about shooting trends in the Premier League on the Opta Analyst site.

QUIZ – The Magic of the Quiz

The magic of the FA Cup is well known, but does that mean it’s memorable? Let’s find out. Answers at the bottom of the page.

1. When was the last time one of the other three FA Cup semi-finalists (Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace) aside from Man City won the competition?

2. After losing 3-0 to Crystal Palace on Saturday, how many consecutive FA Cup quarter-finals have Fulham been beaten in?

3. How many penalty shootouts have Nottingham Forest participated in/won in this season’s FA Cup?

4. Prior to their 3-0 win at Preston North End, when was the last time Aston Villa reached the FA Cup semi-finals?

5. Man City have qualified for the FA Cup semi-finals for the 20th time in their history, but how many times have they done so under Pep Guardiola?

Ask Opta

This week’s question comes from Leonardo Novak Silveira, who asks: “In the 2019-2020 season, we saw Liverpool win the Premier League with seven matchdays to spare, and PSG might do the same in MD27 if they win and results go their way. Were there other times a team won one of the top five European leagues with seven matchdays or more still to go?” 

Do you have a stats-based football question you want to Ask Opta? If so, send it to [email protected] and we’ll do our best to provide you with the answer in a future edition of SVQ.

Answer:

Unfortunately for PSG, despite their whopping 6-1 win at Saint-Étienne on Saturday, they did not quite clinch the Ligue 1 title on Matchday 27. Monaco’s 2-1 home win over Nice kept the ‘race’ alive, in a manner of speaking. Luis Enrique’s men need just one more point to seal it.

It would not have been the earliest PSG have won the league, though. They hold the Ligue 1 record for earliest title win, which occurred in the 2015-16 season when they were crowned on 13 March thanks to a 9-0 win at Troyes (the biggest ever away win in the competition) with eight games remaining.

In terms of the other top leagues in Europe, Serie A has never seen a team win the title with seven or more games left. The earliest on record is five games, which has happened six times, including the last two seasons for Napoli (2022-23) and Inter (2023-24).

In La Liga, we can’t find any examples of a team winning the league with more than four games to go, which has happened numerous times, including each of the last three seasons for Real Madrid (2021-22), Barcelona (2022-23) and Madrid again (2023-24).

In the Bundesliga, though, Bayern Munich step up. The Rekordmeister broke the record in Germany for earliest title win in the 2013-14 season under Pep Guardiola, securing the Meisterschale after just 27 games (seven games remaining).

Our Opta data hubs have detailed team and player stats, predictions, expected league tables and much more. Click below to start your own data investigations.

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Quiz Answers

1. When was the last time one of the other three FA Cup semi-finalists (Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace) aside from Man City won the competition?

Nottingham Forest in 1958-59

2. After losing 3-0 to Crystal Palace on Saturday, how many consecutive FA Cup quarter-finals have Fulham been beaten in?

Five

3. How many penalty shootouts have Nottingham Forest participated in/won in this season’s FA Cup?

Three – Nottingham Forest are the first team ever to win three FA Cup penalty shootouts in a single season

4. Prior to their 3-0 win at Preston North End, when was the last time Aston Villa reached the FA Cup semi-finals?

2014-15

5. Man City have qualified for the FA Cup semi-finals for the 20th time in their history, but how many times have they done so under Pep Guardiola?

Eight – The most by any side since the Spaniard took charge of the club in 2016

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