Man City and Erling Haaland may have to sacrifice Dixie Dean record for bigger prize

Erling Haaland insists he isn't thinking of records, and would swap his 51 goals this season for a treble with Manchester City.

Given the joy he shows whenever he scores a goal, it's hard to believe him entirely, but the sentiment remains and Haaland is on the same page as the club. As a Jack Grealish post on social media showed last week, City's stated goal this season is the Premier League and the Champions League.

If Haaland doesn't score another goal this season but wins the treble, he won't mind one bit. Given his record in his first 45 appearances of the season, however, City's success will be closely linked to Haaland scoring goals, and one of the reasons he was brought in was to score the goals that have eluded the Blues in the big semi-finals and finals.

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With five league games left, any goal Haaland scores will extend his record 35 goals in the season, while he needs one more in the Champions League to break the record for most goals scored by a player from an English club in a season in the competition. It's a long shot, but if he was to score five goals in the semi-final and a potential final, he would equal Cristiano Ronaldo's record from 2013/14 of 17 in a Champions League campaign.

Twelve goals in all competitions would see Haaland get perhaps the most impressive record of the lot - Dixie Dean's record of 63 goals across all competitions in a season by a top-flight player from 1927-28. With a maximum of nine games still to play, Haaland would at least level Dean's record with 11.9 goals able to be scored at his current rate of a goal every 68 minutes.

That would mean Haaland playing every minute of the remaining