Youngest Managers To Win The Premier League Erling Haaland scored five goals against RB Leipzig on Tuesday night. Those goals propelled him beyond the Mo Salah and Ruud van Nistelrooy goal-scoring record debate and into Dixie Dean territory. Can he catch the Everton legend?
If Mikel Arteta wins the Premier League, he will become the youngest manager to lift the trophy by more than a year. Whose record is he trying to take? We take an age-centric look at past Premier League-winning managers.
Erling Haaland vs Dixie Dean
Erling Haaland has propelled himself into another stratosphere. He is chasing what seemed an untouchable record held by Dixie Dean after he equalled Luiz Adriano and Lionel Messi’s record for most goals in a Champions League game on Tuesday night.
He sat on 34 goals in all competitions before Manchester City played Leipzig in the Champions League, neck and neck with his competitors for most goals in all competitions in a season among Premier League players.
After his five-goal effort, he now has 39. After 36 games in 1993-94, Andrew Cole had scored 36 goals. Harry Kane had 35 in 2017-18 after the same amount of games.
But neither hold the record. The record is held by Ruud van Nistelrooy (2002-03) and Mohamed Salah (2017-18), who both scored 44 in 52 games – 0.84 goals per game. Haaland is averaging 1.08 per game this season.
Manchester City have 11 games left in the Premier League, at least two more in the Champions League and they play Burnley in the FA Cup on Saturday. That’s at least 14 more games to score five goals and beat Van Nistelrooy and Salah’s record.
Dixie Dean? Well that’s another story entirely. Back in 1927-28, Dean scored 63 goals in 41 games for Everton. No, we haven’t accidentally switched those numbers. He scored 1.53 goals per game that season. That record won’t be matched, surely, but Haaland might have 63 goals in his sights.
Haaland would have to average 1.71 goals per game across those 14 games to catch Dean but if City progress in the FA Cup, as they’re expected to, he’ll have even more games and will likely be in touching distance of the more than 100-year-old record.
The Special One, The Youngest One
If Mikel Arteta manages to pull off a Premier League win this season with Arsenal, he will cease to be a manager. Or a former player. Or a husband, dad or human being for that matter. He will become a unit of measurement.
Yuichiro Miura climbed Everest when he was 80? That’s cool but Mikel Arteta won the Premier League when he was 41. Tatum O’Neal won an Oscar when she was seven? Not as impressive as Mikel Arteta beating Pep to a PL title at 41, mate.
The current holder of the record is Jose Mourinho, who won the title with Chelsea in 2004-05 when he was 42 years and 94 days old back when he lived up to his own billing as ‘The Special One’.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, Arsenal and City go to the wire and the title is decided on the final day of the season, the 28th of May, against Wolves. Arteta would be 41 years and 62 days old. That is a full 397 days younger than Mourinho.
The oldest manager to win the Premier League? It’s Alex Ferguson. He has won 13 out of 30 so it would make sense then that he featured at one end of the spectrum. Fergie was 71 years and 112 days old when he last won it with Manchester United having lifted his first when he was 51 years and 122 days old.
Pep was 47 years and 86 days old when he won his first Premier League title but by then he had already won three LaLiga and three Bundesliga titles by then.
Arteta has a ways to go before he catches Fergie, Pep or Jose but winning the PL this season, when they started with basically no chance, would be quite the way to lift his first league trophy.
Source: the analyst