On Saturday against Brentford, Erling Haaland will attempt to do something nobody has managed since 1946.
The Manchester City striker has scored hat-tricks in his previous two Premier League games and if he can get another at the Etihad Stadium against Thomas Frank’s side this weekend, he will join a very exclusive list of players.
One player getting three goals in three consecutive English top-flight matches has only happened four times — and three of them were before 1930.
Here, The Athletic tells the stories of those four occasions, and the men the 24-year-old Norway international is hoping to emulate.
Opponents: Liverpool, Leicester City, West Ham United
Osborne, Tottenham’s centre-forward, 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 opposition players needed 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 opportunities for Osborne and his fellow forwards (the goals-per-game 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 that point) scored twice away against Sheffield United in his first game of that 1925-26 season. Three more goals came in his next 10 matches, ahead of Liverpool’s visit to White Hart Lane on October 24, where the 29-year-old claimed a hat-trick as Tottenham ran out 3-1 winners.
A week later, in their next match, Osborne — who had been born near Cape Town in what is now South Africa — scored another three goals away against Leicester. Tottenham lost that one 5-3, making it the only instance on this list of a player’s hat-trick coming in a defeat.
The following Saturday, November 7, 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 against West Ham.
Frank Osborne, second left, at a golf tournament in 1924 (Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Osborne is the only of these four players who didn’t score four goals in at least one of the matches in question and is also the only one who didn’t get a hat-trick against Arsenal as part of their treble of trebles.
He failed to find the net in Tottenham’s next league game against Newcastle United and scored just 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 appearances — did earn him an international recall and he got a hat-trick against Belgium in the May. It was the first time an England player had scored three times in a game since the First World War.
Tom Jennings, for Leeds United in 1926
Opponents: Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers
Scotsman Jennings scored three hat-tricks in a row to take Leeds from 16th place up to seventh across the early autumn of the 1926-27 season.
The forward joined the Yorkshire club from Scottish side Raith Rovers in 1925 and in his first full season (1925-26), he played every league game, scoring 26 goals.
The then 24-year-old started the 1926-27 season with three goals in seven league matches and then, on September 25, found the net three times against visitors Arsenal as Leeds ran out 4-1 winners. Led by manager Arthur Fairclough, they then travelled to Anfield on October 2 and Jennings put four past Liverpool goalkeeper Arthur Riley, two goals in each half, to help his side win 4-2.
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A week later, Jennings got another four-goal haul as Leeds beat Blackburn Rovers 4-1 at Elland Road.
In Leeds’ next league game, away against Leicester, Jennings scored twice but couldn’t quite manage to make it four in a row, as they were beaten 3-2. This remains the closest anyone has come to scoring four consecutive hat-tricks in the English top flight.
Jennings finished that season with 37 goals in all competitions (35 coming 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), though for the first of those seasons, Leeds were in the Second Division.
The club’s good run quickly ended after Jennings’ three hat-tricks though, with Fairclough’s side only winning six of their final 32 league games and getting relegated.
Dixie Dean, for Everton in 1928
Opponents: Burnley, Arsenal, Bolton Wanderers
Arguably the greatest goalscorer in English footballing history, Dean scored 60 times in the 1927-28 First Division for Everton. No other player — before or since — has even found the net 50 times in an English top-flight campaign.
Dixie Dean leading Everton out – and setting a target for Haaland (Barker/Getty Images)
Dean, who only turned 21 in the January of that season, played in 39 of Everton’s 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 made it to the 60-goal mark by scoring seven times in the final two games of the season — four at Burnley on April 28 in a 5-3 win and then three at home to Arsenal a week later in a 3-3 draw. This meant he finished the campaign with successive hat-tricks.
Then, on the opening day of the 1928-29 season, Everton won 3-2 away 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 go on to win the title) in Everton’s next match.
This is the only one of the four instances of three consecutive hat-tricks that was spread across two seasons.
Overall, Dean scored a record 30 hat-tricks in the top division of English football. Haaland has eight, so needs another 23 to surpass this mark. Dean averaged a hat-trick every 12.1 games during his top-flight career in England (30 in 362 appearances) and the Norwegian is averaging one every 8.6 matches (eight in 69 games).
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 its top flight consisted of the same 22 clubs who had been competing in the 1939-40 version when it was abandoned after each 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 league. Ten of Balmer’s 24 (42 per cent) came in three consecutive games in the 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 away to Derby a week later as George Kay’s side triumphed 4-1. Then, on November 23 in a 4-2 home victory against Arsenal, Balmer completed a feat that hasn’t been emulated in the almost 78 years since by scoring a third consecutive hat-trick.
He scored once in the next game away at Blackpool and hit another four goals before Christmas, but after that his form dropped off and from December 25 to the end of the season he scored just four times in 19 league games (after registering 20 in 20 before that date).
These were the only three hat-tricks that Balmer, who played for Liverpool for his entire career from 1935 to 1952, making over 300 appearances, ever scored.
Haaland contributing to his hat-trick against Ipswich (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Haaland has been in this position before.
Near 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 could only find the net once in their next game, away against Aston Villa.
Yet with a rampant City playing Brentford at home on a Saturday at 3pm (Haaland has 17 goals from his 13 league appearances at the Etihad at that kick-off time) there is a genuine possibility he will join Osborne, Jennings, Dean and Balmer.
It would be a remarkable achievement, and one we would be highly unlikely to see again for a very long time.
Over to you, Erling.
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(Top photo: Haaland after his hat-trick against West Ham; Catherine Ivill/AMA via Getty Images)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5740322/2024/09/13/haaland-three-hat-tricks-in-a-row/
