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Erling Haaland has got off to a really good start this season.

With his brace for Manchester City against Brentford on Saturday, the 24-year-old brought his tally for the 2024/25 season to nine goals – the highest number of any player in the first four games of a Premier League season.

With three consecutive hat-tricks against West Ham United and Ipswich Town, Haaland has now scored eight hat-tricks, the fourth-highest number in the Premier League, despite only being in the Premier League for just over two years. Those who claimed the Norway international’s form dipped last season when he was affected by a series of injuries appear to have taken it personally.

Haaland’s goal-scoring instincts often recall a schoolyard bully – promoted side Ipswich might have asked him to find a player his size – but his record shows he is not afraid of the traditional ‘Big Six’. Since making his debut for City in August 2022, he has scored against every Premier League team he has faced.

But the fact that he scores goals so easily against teams like West Ham and Ipswich raises a question: are all goals worth the same?

His two goals against Brentford, who have finished 13th, 9th and 16th in the Premier League over the last three seasons, were impressive, but would a single goal to help them beat title rivals Arsenal this Sunday carry more weight?

The athlete has previously looked at the importance of a goal – which is determined by factors such as the timing and importance of a particular shot – and it is now common practice to adjust the value of a player’s metrics based on the strength of the league in which he plays.

But can we go deeper and prepare for the specific enemies we face?

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Can we measure the value of a goal?

First, the methodology.

We can measure the strength of a team by its ClubElo rating, which awards points when a team wins. More points are awarded for wins against stronger teams, and fewer for wins against weaker opponents. Higher ratings simply mean higher quality.

By calculating the ClubElo rating of each club at the time of the match in question, we can estimate the proportional difference in team quality and thus adjust the value of a player’s goal.

For example, each of Haaland’s three goals against Ipswich last month was “worth” approximately 0.8 goals given the difference in quality between the two teams. In contrast, Sammie Szmodics’ goal for the visitors in their 4-1 defeat at the Etihad Stadium that day was worth 1.3 goals, given it came against significantly stronger opposition.

By combining this data for all players since the start of the 2018–19 season, we can shed some light on the top scorers’ records and see who may have been inflating their statistics.

With a 15-goal variation, Mohamed Salah’s 126 goals would be worth 111 goals, while Haaland’s 72 goals would have an adjusted value of 60. Despite their impressive goal records, the overall records of these two players show the biggest deficits when considering the quality of the opposition.

Players from the strongest teams can only reduce the value of their goals against weaker opponents – so it’s more likely that the system will penalise Haaland and Salah. However, this analysis can help us identify those strikers who have a knack for finding the net against the better teams.

Ollie Watkins is not penalised because he often scores against clubs considered better than Aston Villa – including Arsenal, Liverpool (five goals in both cases), City (two) and Tottenham Hotspur (three). His 61 Premier League goals were worth… well, exactly 61 goals after their value was adjusted since he joined Villa four years ago.

Despite Everton’s goal drought in recent years, their top scorer Dominic Calvert-Lewin is also a player who has consistently shown good scoring skills – he has scored against weaker opponents, but also against City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal.

If we applied this method to the Premier League Golden Boot race last season, the list would be much tighter. Haaland still topped the list, but his 27 goals were “worth” a more modest 22.9, putting him just ahead of Cole Palmer, whose adjusted value was 21.6 goals for Chelsea.

Who made the greatest contribution to their goals during this period?

In relative terms, Luton Town’s Elijah Adebayo has increased his goalscoring output the most, with an average increase of 12 percent per goal – or a strike “worth” over 1.1 goals by that yardstick. Of the 10 goals Adebayo scored last Premier League season, seven were against Chelsea, Newcastle United, Brighton & Hove Albion, Arsenal and City, suggesting he is among the best.

Nottingham Forest’s Taiwo Awoniyi also fares well, adding almost eight percent extra value to his 14 goals – three against Arsenal, two against Chelsea and the one to beat Liverpool at the City Ground in October 2022.

Leandro Trossard and Jack Grealish are also on the list due to their performances at previous clubs such as Brighton and Villa. The ability to perform against stronger opposition can be crucial and would have played a role in the pair’s moves to Arsenal and City.

Another recent example of this is Dominic Solanke, whose goals for Bournemouth added five percent of their value when the strength of the opposition is taken into account. Solanke is now top of the Premier League table after joining Tottenham in August, and it was clear that he could perform at a higher level than Bournemouth last season (who finished 12th and 15th since returning to the domestic elite in 2022).

Goals are the currency of every striker, but like all players, they are subject to different exchange rates across borders.

Adjusting an individual’s performance compared to other leagues is common, but The athlete has already shown that inequality exists within Leagues.

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Which of the top European leagues are the most competitive? We tried to find out…

Feyenoord’s Santiago Gimenez was close to joining Forest in the summer after scoring the third most goals in the Dutch Eredivisie last season with 23. However, with six of his goals coming 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 mastered promotion from the English second-tier Championship to the Primeira Liga with ease, scoring 29 goals in 33 league games – more than any other player in Portugal.

Many believe that the 26-year-old Swede deserves a move to the Premier League (he was under contract with Brighton from 2018 to 2021, but never played in the top flight in his eight appearances for them), but the difference in quality between Sporting and relegated sides Vizela and Chaves (against whom he scored a total of six goals last season) is considerable.

If you need to drive this point home, just look at Darwin Nunez’s prolific move from Benfica to Liverpool. In his farewell season of 2021-22, he scored 26 league goals for the Lisbon club, and those 26 remain unmatched in the little over two years he spent on Merseyside, where he scored a total of 20 Premier League goals.

Even such a simple analysis suggests that not all goals are the same.

In Haaland’s case, adjusting the value of his goals was an attempt to make him seem more human.

Did it work?

(Top photo: Michael Regan via Getty Images)