Alan Shearer on Erling Haaland and Premier League Records

Alan Shearer has spent a lifetime bullying goalkeepers. Now, at 54, he is openly plotting against a striker he has never faced.

If the Premier League’s record goalscorer wants to keep his number intact, Erling Haaland really needs to find a new league.

“I’m sure it will be broken one day, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts,” Shearer told the Football Interview. “If we can get Haaland out to Real Madrid or somewhere like that in the next couple of years then it should be alright.”

He laughs when he says it. The numbers are no joke.

Shearer finished with 260 Premier League goals, amassed over 14 relentless seasons. Haaland already has 120 in just over four campaigns with Manchester City. If the Norwegian stays fit, stays in Manchester and City remain the machine they are, the maths is brutal for Shearer’s record.

Harry Kane once looked the likeliest to reel him in. Kane reached 213 Premier League goals before swapping Tottenham Hotspur for Bayern Munich in 2023. That decision froze his tally and handed Shearer a reprieve. Haaland offers no such comfort. He is younger, playing for a side built to dominate, and scores at a rate that makes even Shearer’s prime look almost conservative.

Shearer knows the direction of travel. If Haaland does not catch him, someone else will. But he has earned the right to cling to the record for as long as he can.

And he is determined to enjoy every minute of it.

Leaving home, finding home

Shearer’s bond with Newcastle United has become football folklore, but it started with a wrench.

At 15, he left his home city for Southampton, moving into digs with another family on the south coast. It felt like a one-way ticket.

“I wouldn’t change anything – one of the best things I did was move away from home at 15,” he said. Then comes the twist only time can provide. “But when my kids got to 15 I thought ‘how on earth did my parents let me leave home at that age?’”

He still remembers the platform, the moment, the doubt.

“I remember getting on the train at Newcastle Central station, looking at my mum and dad and the tears rolling down my mum’s face when I was pulling out of the station and waving thinking, ‘is this the last time I’m ever going to live back home?’”

He did come back. First partway, then all the way.

A move closer to Tyneside came in 1992 when he joined Blackburn Rovers, working under Sir Kenny Dalglish. There, Shearer hit his peak, powering Blackburn to the Premier League title in 1995. That was his first major trophy. He assumed it would not be his last.

The homecoming followed in 1996. Newcastle United, his boyhood club, was always a matter of when, not if. He walked into St James’ Park as the world’s most expensive footballer and the city’s favourite son. He never lifted silverware in black and white – losing two FA Cup finals and watching title dreams fade – but he became something more enduring: a symbol.

From the Gallowgate to the pitch

Before he was the club’s record goalscorer, Shearer was just another kid in the Gallowgate End, staring at Kevin Keegan.

“I saw the adulation that he had. He was like the pied piper in Newcastle, everyone followed him everywhere,” Shearer said. “I was one of those little kids that went to the training ground, to the ground – and I wanted a piece of that.”

Years later, he signed for Keegan. Surreal barely covers it.

Shearer spent a decade back in the north east, scoring 206 goals in 405 appearances for Newcastle across all competitions. He carried the team, shouldered the expectation, and kept shooting when others would have wilted. The trophy cabinet stayed bare, but his status did not depend on medals.

It means that even now, on the rare days he goes as a fan, he can’t simply stroll to the ground.

“My friend owns a pub in Newcastle called Harry’s and I get dropped off outside the pub and then I walk up from the ground,” he said. “I’ve got a cap on and I very rarely look up because it would take me forever to get from the pub to the ground. But I often do it.

“They’ve done that all their life and I’m able to do that now and I love it.”

The legend wants to feel like a supporter. The supporter can never quite stop being a legend.

Eight games in the dugout

For all his certainty in front of goal, Shearer was far less sure about what came next when he retired 20 years ago.

Management tugged at him. So did the television studio.

Newcastle’s call in 2009 tipped the balance. The club was in crisis, rooted in trouble and sliding towards relegation. They asked Shearer to step in as interim manager for the final eight games of the season.

“Newcastle were in desperate trouble and I could never say no – we were bottom of the league, fighting for our lives,” he said. “I should have known that when I signed the contract on April Fool’s Day that it wasn’t going to work out!”

It didn’t. Newcastle went down. Shearer never returned to the dugout.

He thought he would. “I always felt that I was going to go into it again and I wanted to. I had a couple of interviews and got offered the job at Cardiff. And then things changed ... and I thought, ‘what am I doing here?’”

That moment of clarity ended his brief flirtation with management. The technical area’s loss became the studio’s gain.

The long days and late nights

Now Shearer’s weekends are still dictated by the Premier League, just from a different angle.

He has become a fixture on Match of the Day, a trusted voice on England duty and a regular alongside Gary Lineker and Micah Richards on The Rest Is Football podcast. His schedule is relentless.

“It is such a long day. For me travelling from Newcastle, it’s a probably 19-20 hour day,” he said. The irony is not lost on him. “What people don’t realise is that you’re meant to be at your brightest and your liveliest when you go on live at 10:30, whereas if you’re watching football all day on the settee, you’re ready to nod off at that time.”

Instead of timing runs and peeling off centre-backs, he now dissects pressing triggers and finishing angles. He watches everything, sees almost every goal that goes in across the league.

Which brings him back to Haaland.

From the studio chair, Shearer can monitor every strike that edges the Manchester City forward closer to that 260 mark. He can admire the movement, the ruthlessness, the repetition of it all.

He knows how this story usually ends for records. They fall.

For now, though, the number stands, carved into Premier League history. And if Real Madrid do come calling for Haaland, nobody will be cheering that transfer louder than the man at the top of the list.