Erling Haaland is the safest assumption in English football. He has 117 Premier League goals from 137 appearances and three Golden Boots in four seasons. His late finish against Sunderland on 20 September 2026 meant he had scored against every one of the 25 clubs he has faced in the competition.
That reputation travels with him to Anfield on Sunday 11 October, and the Liverpool vs Manchester City odds price him as though the venue is incidental. His record at this particular ground says otherwise.
Four visits, one penalty
Haaland has started four Premier League matches at Anfield and played all 360 minutes. He drew a blank in three of them.
Liverpool won 1-0 in October 2022, Mohamed Salah settling it on 76 minutes after VAR had ruled out a Phil Foden goal. The sides drew 1-1 in March 2024, John Stones scoring and Alexis Mac Allister equalising from the penalty spot. Liverpool won 2-0 in December 2024 through Cody Gakpo and Salah, with Virgil van Dijk handling Haaland so comfortably that the striker managed two shots all game and did not win a single duel.
The fourth visit, on 8 February 2026, ended the run, and only just. Dominik Szoboszlai’s free kick put Liverpool ahead on 74 minutes. Bernardo Silva volleyed in Haaland’s knockdown on 84. Then Alisson brought down Matheus Nunes and Haaland rolled the penalty in during the third minute of stoppage time to win it 2-1. His first league goal at the ground arrived on his fourth attempt, from 12 yards, with the game already turned by somebody else.
The goal nobody counts
It was not, strictly, his first goal at Anfield. On 2 October 2019, a 19-year-old Haaland came on for Red Bull Salzburg after 56 minutes with his side 3-1 down, and four minutes later he turned in Takumi Minamino’s ball across the six-yard box to make it 3-3. Salah won it for Liverpool nine minutes after that. Seven years on, that tap-in is still the only time Haaland has scored at Anfield from open play.
What the pattern is actually worth
Two goals in five appearances at the ground is not a curse, and four Premier League visits is too small a sample to carry much predictive weight in either direction. The honest reading is that nothing in the numbers proves Anfield does something to Haaland that Old Trafford or the Emirates does not.
What the numbers do is sit awkwardly against the price. Across his City career, he has scored at a rate of roughly a goal every game. At Anfield, that rate is one goal in four league visits, and the one goal was a spot kick. Anytime scorer markets on the major betting sites tend to shade him towards odds-on in almost any fixture, which leaves very little room for a venue where the raw return has been 25%.
There is a case for saying the fixture has moved on. City’s February win was their first at Anfield in front of a crowd since Nicolas Anelka scored twice there in May 2003, and it completed a league double over Liverpool for the first time since 1936-37. Enzo Maresca has replaced Pep Guardiola and has started with five straight league wins, taking City into the international break three points clear at the top.
None of that changes the individual line. Haaland has one Premier League goal in 360 minutes at Anfield, scored from the penalty spot in the 93rd minute of his fourth attempt. Almost everything else about his game has travelled to every ground in the country. That has not.
