City's Golden Moulden has record Erling won't match!

ERLING Haaland has started rewriting the Premier League record books in his first few months at City, but he's actually part of a lineage when it comes to recordbreaking strikers wearing sky blue.

- TYRONE MARSHALL

The Norwegian might have an astonishing goal record, but what he doesn't have is a world record for goal scoring, like Paul Moulden.

The Farnworth-born forward was a child prodigy in front of goal, earning a place in the Guinness Book of Records for plundering 340 goals in a single season for Bolton Lads' Under-15s, with 289 coming in 40 official fixtures, a rate of more than seven a game.

This was the 1981/82 season, four years before Moulden helped City win the FA Youth Cup, and it's the kind of stratospheric goalscoring feats that these days would set social media ablaze.

But 30 years ago Moulden was a secret that barely made it out of north west football circles. He had scouts watching him regularly, but only ever wanted to sign for his boyhood club, City.

"I was getting attention from football clubs, but I just wonder now if somebody was doing what I was doing, it would be a lot different. It would be interesting, wouldn't it?" Moulden told M.E.N. Sport.

Unfortunately, a catalogue of serious injuries hampered Moulden's progress, before his City career ended in a bitter feud with manager Mel Machin. He would never take those goalscoring records from youth level to the big leagues and until recently ran a chippy in Bolton, where he would get customers asking him where it had all gone wrong.

'Women, 'partying, 'booze' and 'just didn't fancy it' were some of the suggestions. The truth is rather more painful, figuratively and literally, which is why he has released a book, Lethal: 340 Goals... In One Season, to tell his story.

It is probably a story of 'what if?! What if Moulden hadn't broken his leg three times before making City's first team? What if he hadn't fallen out with Machin dur the best season of his career? "