Erling Haaland is aiming for three hat-tricks in a row – but how rare is that?

Against Brentford on Saturday, Erling Haaland will try to do something no one has been able to do since 1946.

The Manchester City forward has scored hat-tricks in his previous two Premier League games and if he can get another hat-trick at the Etihad Stadium against Thomas Frank’s side this weekend, he will join a very exclusive list of players.

One player scoring three times in three consecutive English top-flight games has only happened four times – and three of those were before 1930.

Here, The Athletics tells the stories of those four occasions, and the men the 24-year-old Norwegian international hopes to emulate.

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Opponents: Liverpool, Leicester City, West Ham United

Osborne, the Tottenham striker, played 26 times for them in all competitions in the 1924-25 season… and didn’t score a single goal.

That summer, the offside law was changed: the number of opponents required to be in front of the attacker to make them onside was reduced from three to two. Unsurprisingly, this led to higher scoring matches and more chances for Osborne and his fellow strikers (the goals per match rate for the 1925–26 English top flight was 3.69, up from 2.58 a season earlier).

The England international (three caps and zero goals at the time) scored twice against Sheffield United in his first game of that 1925/26 season. Three more goals came in his next ten games, ahead of Liverpool’s visit to White Hart Lane on October 24, where the 29-year-old claimed a hat-trick as Tottenham won 3-1.

A week later, in their next match, Osborne – born near Cape Town in what is now South Africa – scored a further three goals against Leicester. Tottenham lost that 5–3, making this the only instance on this list of a player’s hat-trick ending in defeat.

The following Saturday, 7 November, Osborne became the first player in English top-flight history to score a hat-trick in three consecutive games as Tottenham won 4–2 at home to West Ham.

Osborne is the only one of these four players not to score four goals in at least one of the matches in question and also the only one not to get a hat-trick against Arsenal as part of their treble or trebles.

He failed to find the net in Tottenham’s next league match against Newcastle United and scored only one more top-flight hat-trick in his career: against Newcastle in January 1928 (four goals).

However, Osborne’s form in 1925–26 – he finished the season with 25 goals in 39 league games – earned him an international recall and he scored a hat-trick against Belgium in May. It was the first time since the First World War that an English player had scored three times in a match.

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Tom Jennings, for Leeds United in 1926

Opponents: Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers

Scotsman Jennings scored three hat-tricks in a row to lift Leeds from 16th to seventh in the early autumn of the 1926–27 season.

The striker joined the Yorkshire club from Scottish club Raith Rovers in 1925 and in his first full season (1925-26) he played every league match and scored 26 goals.

The then 24-year-old started the 1926–27 season with three goals in seven league matches and then, on 25 September, found the net three times against visitors Arsenal as Leeds won 4–1. Under manager Arthur Fairclough, they then traveled to Anfield on 2 October and Jennings put four past Liverpool goalkeeper Arthur Riley, two goals in each half, to help his side win 4–2.

A week later, Jennings scored four goals again as Leeds defeated Blackburn Rovers 4–1 at Elland Road.

In Leeds’ next league match, away against Leicester, Jennings scored twice but could not quite make it four in a row as they were defeated 3–2. This remains the closest they have come to scoring four hat-tricks in a row in the English top flight.

Jennings finished that season with 37 goals in all competitions (35 in the league). This total has only been bettered twice in Leeds’ history – both times by John Charles (43 in 1953-54 and 39 in 1956-57), although Leeds were in the Second Division for the first of those seasons.

However, the club’s good run ended quickly after Jennings’ three hat-tricks, with the Fairclough side winning just six of their last 32 league games and being relegated.

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Dixie Dean, for Everton in 1928

Opponents: Burnley, Arsenal, Bolton Wanderers

Dean is arguably the greatest goalscorer in English football history, scoring 60 times in the 1927/28 First Division for Everton. No other player – before or since – has found the net even 50 times in an English top-flight campaign.

Dean, who only turned 21 in January that season, played in 39 Everton league games and scored in 29 of them. He hit seven hat-tricks and his goals helped the club win the title for the first time in 13 years.

He reached the 60-goal mark by scoring seven times in the last two games of the season: four against Burnley on 28 April in a 5–3 win and three at home to Arsenal a week later in a 3–3 draw. . This meant he finished the campaign with consecutive hat-tricks.

Then, on the opening day of the 1928–29 season, Everton won 3–2 against Bolton Wanderers, with Dean scoring all three to make it a hat-trick of hat-tricks. The England international then failed to score against The Wednesday (now Sheffield Wednesday, who would later win the title) in Everton’s next match.

This is the only of four instances of three consecutive hat-tricks spanning two seasons.

In total, Dean scored a record 30 hat-tricks in the top division of English football. Haaland has eight, so 23 more are needed to surpass this target. Dean has averaged a hat-trick every 12.1 games during his top-flight career in England (30 in 362 games) and the Norwegian has an average of one every 8.6 games (eight in 69 games).

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Jack Balmer, for Liverpool in 1946

Opponents: Portsmouth, Derby County, Arsenal

The 1946–47 season was the first to be completed in the English league since the outbreak of the Second World War, and the top flight consisted of the same 22 clubs that had competed in the 1939–40 version when it was abandoned after each season. team had played three games.

Liverpool went on to win the title for the first time in 24 years, powered by strikers Balmer and Albert Stubbins, who both scored 24 goals in the competition. Ten of Balmer’s 24 (42 percent) came in three consecutive games in November.

The then 30-year-old – Balmer is the oldest player on this list – scored all three at Anfield in a 3-0 win against Portsmouth on November 9, before hitting four in 17 minutes for Derby for George Kay’s side. triumphed 4-1. Then, on 23 November, in a 4–2 home win against Arsenal, Balmer completed a feat not equaled in almost 78 years since by scoring a third consecutive hat-trick.

He scored once in the next match away at Blackpool and scored a further four goals before Christmas, but after this his form slumped and from 25 December to the end of the season he scored just four times in 19 league games (after having made 20 appearances registered in 20 matches). before that date).

These were the only three hat-tricks ever scored by Balmer, who played his entire career for Liverpool from 1935 to 1952 and made more than 300 appearances.

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Haaland has been in this position before.

At the start of the 2022/23 Premier League season, his first with City, he scored back-to-back hat-tricks at home against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest, but failed in the next match, away against Aston Villa.

But with a rampant City playing Brentford at home at 3pm on Saturday (Haaland has 17 goals from his 13 league games at the Etihad at that time) there is a real possibility he joins Osborne, Jennings, Dean and Balmer.

It would be a remarkable achievement, and it’s highly unlikely we’ll see it for very long.

Over to you, Erling.

(Top photo: Haaland after his hat-trick against West Ham; Catherine Ivill/AMA via Getty Images)