A certain Norse God is currently leading the top goalscorer charts in the English top flight
The Premier League season is well underway, in what is sure to be a frantic, busy and fascinating campaign. Experts and bookies alike are already wondering who might win the golden boot come the end of May 2023. Fans can use a William Hill sign up offer to make their own predictions.
We can always count on the usual suspects to be banging in the goals, but there are some new strikers in the league. Some have adapted to the English style of play more quickly than others. Some may need more time to really hit the ground running. There are strikers who have moved clubs and may just have found the right circumstances to reach their full potential.
In a long and hard season, with a World Cup crammed in the middle of it, having a star striker to rely on is going to be crucial for the teams at the top of the Premier League who are looking to compete for the title or secure a place in the top four. It's not always easy to predict who those names are going to be, but with 7 games played, the bookies already have some data to go on when making their predictions.
Here are the current top four favourites to win the Premier League golden boot:
*All odds come from Oddschecker
Erling Haaland (1/4 favourite)
There was plenty of skepticism upon his arrival. The doubters, perhaps betraying a touch of wishful thinking, were already citing a "Bundesliga tax" or claiming he wouldn't be able to hack it in the Premier League off the bat. Oh how wrong those people were!
The Norwegian man-mountain Erling Braut Haaland has already all but guaranteed, in the eyes of the bookies, that he will be winning the 2022/23 Premier League golden boot. The only question is how many will he score, and will he break the record for most goals scored in a single EPL season? That record is currently joint-held by Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer, the former having netted 34 for Newcastle in 1993/94 and the latter who managed the same amount when leading Blackburn Rovers to the Premier League title the following year.
With a frankly ridiculous 11 goals in 7 appearances, and the look of an unstoppable beast in the box, the obvious answer seems to be yes, but anything can happen in football. It's a long old season. Players can lose form, get injured, or be left out by their managers.
Taking that into account, it's still incredibly hard to bet against Haaland at least winning this season's golden boot, and likely breaking the record while he's at it. With his native Norway having failed to qualify for the Qatar World Cup, he will be a lot fresher than his peers going into the second half of the season, and then there's the small matter of his remarkable consistency - he's scored 149 goals in 193 career appearances so far. At Molde, Salzburg, Dortmund and now City, he has been truly unstoppable.
At just 22 years of age, there's no telling how far the Norwegian can go in the game, but one thing's for sure, he is odds on to score more goals than anyone else in the Premier League this season.
Harry Kane (8/1)
It's hard to describe a three-time Premier League golden boot winner as an also-ran, but as the odds indicate, there's little confidence from the bookies that anyone can really challenge Haaland this season.
Nonetheless, if anyone else is going to win the prize, it will most likely be Harry Kane. He's been remarkably consistent, scoring more than 15 goals in each of his last 8 seasons in the top flight, including more than 25 in three of those.
The England captain has started the season in fine form, scoring six from seven, and looking a real menace in this Antonio Conte Spurs side. Kane will no doubt believe in his ability to score goals, but with five goals already to make up on Haaland and the new arrival showing no signs of slowing down, it's an unenviable task.
Gabriel Jesus (14/1)
Gabriel Jesus was never considered a potent goalscorer during his time at Manchester City, despite being rightly lauded as an extremely valuable cog in the Pep Guardiola machine. However, since his arrival at the Emirates, he seems to have reinvented himself, and to the joy of Arsenal fans is scoring goals for fun.
He's got 4 in 7 so far, which pales in comparison to the numbers Haaland is putting up, but when compared with any other human striker, he's doing a more than fine job for his new side.
He has maintained all of the elements of his game which would make him such a great asset for any team, while adding a new knack for being in the right place at the right time to score goals. It's very unlikely he will outscore Haaland, but he may well break into the top three for goals scored come the end of the campaign.
Mohamed Salah (16/1)
Three time golden boot winner, and joint-second in the list of all-time Premier League goals in a single season, Mohamed Salah may struggle this season, mostly down to the poor fun exhibited by his Liverpool team.
The Egyptian has so far managed just 2 goals from 6 league appearances and almost certainly won't be troubling the very top of the goalscoring charts in May, but his excellence cannot be diminished.
His 32 goals in the 2017/18 season are only bettered by the aforementioned Cole and Shearer, and he has scored more than 20 goals in four of his five Liverpool campaigns, and more than 15 in all of them.
Despite being a remarkably consistent goalscorer, Salah brings much more than that to the game. He's a world class player who arguably shouldn't even be considered a striker, but like Lionel Messi, he happens to score a boat load of goals while doing almost everything else right on the pitch.
Salah may not be able to compete with Haaland for goals this season, but he is without doubt one of the best players in the Premier League right now.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. In the eyes of the bookies, there can be only one winner - Erling Braut Haaland. It's difficult to argue with that, but if you're willing to bet on the Norwegian falling off the wagon for one reason or another, you might be tempted to look at one of the other three gentlemen on this list to snoop in and steal the crown, at very generous odds.
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