Erling Braut Haaland will be looking to break another Premier League record when Manchester City welcome rivals Manchester United to the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
The 22-year-old is enjoying a remarkable start to life with the Citizens, scoring 14 goals in just 11 games across all competitions.
Eleven of those strikes have come in just seven Premier League matches, with the Norwegian striker failing to find the net in only one league fixture so far this season – the 4-0 win over Bournemouth.
After drawing a blank on his Etihad debut against the Cherries, Haaland netted back-to-back hat-tricks at home against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest, becoming only the sixth player in Premier League history to take the match ball home in successive games.
Should Haaland score three goals in the Manchester derby, he would become the first player in Premier League history to net three consecutive hat-tricks on home soil in the competition.
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The 6ft 5in striker would also become the first player to score as many as three home hat-tricks in a single season since City legend Sergio Aguero during the 2018-19 campaign.
Alan Shearer currently holds the record for the most hat-tricks in a single Premier League season with five, while Aguero has scored more hat-tricks in the competition's history than any other player, netting 12 during his hugely successful 10-year spell at the Etihad.
Haaland is on course to break countless goalscoring records, and manager Pep Guardiola has warned the rest of the league that the Norwegian is only going to improve in front of goal.
"He's an exceptional striker, I've said it many times. But at the age he is, and I think he has ambition, he wants to be better, and I think he will be better," the Spaniard told reporters via Sky Sports News.
"He's a perfect person to manage. He's a nice guy and this is the most important thing."
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Meanwhile, Haaland has recently been left "surprised" by his own goalscoring exploits, telling Viaplay Fotball: "I'm not surprised I'm scoring goals [at Man City]. But the fact that I've scored 14 goals for Man City in the beginning of the season, and we're not in October yet – I didn't expect that."
City's No.9 has a strike rate of 1.86 goals per game, which is currently the best of any player across Europe's top-five leagues, and should he continue his current strike rate and play in every minute of every game in both the Premier League and Champions League, he would finish the campaign with a remarkable 113 goals.
Haaland, who has scored over 50% of City's Premier League goals this season, only needs to score 22 goals in his next 31 league fixtures to break Mohamed Salah's Golden Boot record of 32 strikes in a 38-game season.
The Norway international, who scored in the defeat to Slovenia last week, has been selected to start in every game across all tournaments by Guardiola so far this season and he is expected to retain his place up front for Sunday's Manchester derby.
Oliver Thomas
