Erling Haaland has reached another notable marker for Manchester City, becoming the club\u2019s leading scorer with headed goals in Premier League history after just over four seasons. The milestone did not happen by accident. It was built over years of repetition, frustration and a clear determination to improve a part of his game that once cost him dearly.<\/p>\n
The memory of a missed header in the first Manchester derby of 2024 clearly stayed with him. Haaland attempted what looked like a straightforward chance and sent it over the bar, later admitting how much it lingered in his mind. \u201cPeople say I\u2019m good at scoring goals but I missed the biggest chance in the world ever,\u201d he fretted long after the event. Since then, he has looked far more assured when the ball drops in the air.<\/p>\n
That was evident again on Saturday, when he powered in the decisive goal in a narrow City win. After Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez slipped Antoine Semenyo to the byline, Haaland made his run, shook off a shove from Coventry City\u2019s Aur\u00e8le Amenda and forced his way beyond the Swiss centre back despite the tug on his shirt. He met the ball at the back post and finished with authority, then gave Amenda an impish look before celebrating.<\/p>\n
A week earlier, Haaland had scored in a different way against Crystal Palace, meeting another Semenyo delivery and looping a header over Dean Henderson. The two goals underlined a steady improvement in his aerial play, but the broader point is that this is not sudden progress. It has been years in the making.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you can always get better in things,\u201d the people\u2019s champion of the 2026 World Cup mused last season. \u201cWith headers, you can always get better. You can never be good enough. It is something I try to practise still.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has also said: \u201cI have been practicing my headers ever since I started in Molde in 2017 with Ole Gunnar [Solskj\u00e6r] and Mark Dempsey,\u201d Haaland added, harking back to his time in Norway with the former Manchester United striker. \u201cYou can see I\u2019m getting better and better and there is still a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland\u2019s headed goals record for City reflects years of practice, not just recent form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238],"tags":[1836,1162],"class_list":["post-19173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}