Alan Shearer: 'Scary' Erling Haaland can reach 60 goals mark this season

Erling Haaland has scored 44 goals in 38 games for Manchester City and has been backed to continue netting at his current rate.

Alan Shearer says "scary" Manchester City striker Erling Haaland can reach 60 goals for the season after closing in on the Newcastle United icon's Premier League record.

Haaland scored a brace in Saturday's win at Southampton to take his tally for the season in all competitions in his maiden campaign with City to 44 goals in 38 games.

That is 13 goals more than the next-highest scorer among players across Europe's top five leagues, with Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappe netting 31 in 35 appearances.

Thirty of Haaland's goals have come in the Premier League, leaving him just four short of matching Shearer's record of 34 in a season, which he jointly holds with Andy Cole.

Shearer expects Haaland to surpass that target with time to spare and, with potentially 16 more games to play in all competitions, he believes a bigger milestone is attainable.

"If he can stay fit, Haaland will obliterate the Premier League record I share with Andy Cole of 34 goals in a single season," Shearer said in his column for The Athletic.

"At his current rate of averages in all competitions, with 44 in 38 appearances, he will storm past 50. Even that may be a disservice to him. 

"Who knows, we could even be talking 60 and Dixie Dean territory. Scary."

Haaland reached 30 Premier League goals in 27 games, doing so in five matches fewer than any other player in the competition's history.

Only eight players in the English top flight – most recently Jimmy Greaves in 1961 – have scored more than 40 goals in a single league season.

"I wonder how many people thought it was hyperbole when I wrote nearly a year ago that Erling Haaland would score 40 goals in this Manchester City team?" Shearer said. 

"City were buying goals – as close as you can get to an absolute, cast-iron guarantee – by adding an exceptional centre-forward to a phenomenally creative side.

"If anything, I was being stingy. Exceptional? He's almost perfect and that haul of 40 is already in his rearview mirror."

Haaland's next opportunity to add to his growing haul will come on Tuesday when City host Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie.

The former Borussia Dortmund man has 33 goals in 25 games in the competition, which is also a record for the quickest time to surpass the 30-goal mark in the Champions League.