Chris Wood is an old fashioned striker who is thankful another towering target man in the English Premier League is helping change the way players like him are perceived.

Wood who has scored a record number of Premier League goals for Nottingham Forest this season (18 and counting) sees a bit of himself in Manchester City’s Erling Haaland who has scored 19 times this season.

“I’m a big strong man who plays up top as a number nine, thankfully for Erling he’s changing that concept that thought process on being a big powerful striker and scoring goals with a lot of pace,” Wood told CNN.

“So I’m just trying to implement what I can do very well and be an all round good player.”

Wood and Haaland have gone head-to-head in the Premier League but they could do the same for their respective national sides when the All Whites and Norway play a friendly in Oslo in October.

Erling Haaland.
Photo: photosport

While Wood will help New Zealand qualify for the 2026 Football World Cup next month he is also trying to get Forest back to European football for the first time in a long time.

Forest were last in European Cup competition in 1981 – 10 years before Wood was born.

“As you come to join this club you understand the history that it has the unbelievable side that it has been in the past and where it has come from and yeah they’ve done extremely well in European competitions in the past and we’d love to get back to that sort of thing if we can,” Wood told CNN.

“We’ve still a third of the way left ot go in the season so a lot to go but something definitely to aim for and if we can get there and bring Forest back to that European stage will be fantastic but there’s a lot of hard work to come from now until then.”

Wood said outside the club the excitement about the potential for European football was greater than inside the “four walls” where the focus was on “getting things right so we can win as many games as possible”.

Asked by CNN what his scoring record this season – and a good conversion rate of chances to goals – had taught him about life, Wood said: “I just think of it as trying to be consistent and believe in what you are setting out to do.”

“…you have to be ready to take the opportunities not matter what stage of the game it is at no matter how the game is going and hopefully I can keep that run of good form going.”

Wood is happy to be in Haaland and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah’s company at the top of the Premier League scoring table

“Hopefully I am still there come the end of the season that’s what will matter most both personally and as a club being up there.”

What gets Wood up in the morning to be his very best?

“I want to achieve more than what I achieved last season and I want to continue to achieve great things and have a great season and goal tally and finishing high up in the league,” Wood told CNN.