Ranking the top Premier League strikers is one of the toughest footballing tasks you could offer – but we’ve given it a go.
Throughout the 32 years since the Premier League’s inception, there have been many elite-level forwards that have graced the English top flight – pure goalscorers, technical players and second strikers.
The greatest goalscorer in the history of the Premier League is Alan Shearer, whose record of 260 goals for Southampton, Blackburn and Newcastle has stood for 17 years.
It’s a record that doesn’t look like being broken anytime soon, following on from closest challenger Harry Kane’s summer move to Bayern Munich.
We’ve had a go at ranking the greatest strikers in Premier League history based on numerous criteria – and here’s what we came up with.
10. Luis Suarez
Luis Suarez scored 69 goals in 110 Premier League games for Liverpool in three-and-a-half years – but most fans don’t remember those first 18 months.
In his final two seasons, the Uruguayan smashed in 54 goals in just 66 games. And 31 of those came in his final campaign, in which Suarez, along with attack partner Daniel Sturridge, almost single-handedly drove Liverpool to an unlikely Premier League title.
There was plenty of controversy – in the same summer he left Liverpool to sign for Barcelona in 2014, he had been handed a four-month suspension from all football activity for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup. A year later, he won five trophies with his new club.
9. Andrew Cole
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For many fans, Andy Cole will be forever associated with the winning goal in Turin that sent United to the 1999 Champions League final at the expense of Juventus.
Domestically, Cole was a consistent top flight goalscorer for over 10 years – starting when he smashed in a then-Premier League record of 34 goals in a single season for Newcastle in 1994.
He is the fourth-highest scorer in Premier League history with 187 strikes to his name, with 93 of those arriving in a United shirt.
8. Michael Owen
Possibly the hardest player on this list to effectively rank. At his best in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Michael Owen was the top striker in world football – winning the Ballon d’Or in 2001 was testament to that.
Even though the second half of his career was blighted by injuries, Owen still managed 117 league goals in seven full seasons for Liverpool.
A less successful move to Newcastle then followed in 2005, after a brief spell with Real Madrid, while the Englishman still contributed crucial goals during a three-year spell with Manchester United.
7. Eric Cantona
King Eric. The man who revolutionised Manchester United – and English football – during the early years of the Premier League.
United won the Premier League in all but one of Cantona’s five full seasons with the club. The only time they didn’t was in 1994/95, when the Frenchman missed the final stages after being handed an eight-month ban for kung-fu kicking a member of the crowd at Crystal Palace.
Cantona never broke through the 20-goal barrier in a single campaign for United, but this was a man that was much more than just goals.
6. Erling Haaland
Give it another few years, and Erling Haaland will be further up this list. That he is even in it after just 18 months in the Premier League says it all about just how good he is.
English football has never quite seen anything like Haaland – the physicality, pace and finishing ability all rolled into one.
He scored 36 goals in just 35 league games last season, scooping the Golden Boot and setting a Premier League record for the most goals in a single campaign.
A current tally of 27 goals this season appears quite tame by comparison, but only by his own sensational standards. And he’s just getting started after injury too.
5. Harry Kane
Harry Kane is one of the greatest goalscorers in the history of the Premier League, with 213 strikes to his name with Tottenham before his summer move to Bayern Munich.
While breaking Alan Shearer’s record of 260 still looks inevitable – you have to imagine Kane returns to English football before he retires – Kane is already ahead of the likes of Wayne Rooney and Andy Cole.
With three Premier League Golden Boots, and 47 assists, to his name, there haven’t been many more complete strikers than Kane in English football.
4. Sergio Aguero
Manchester City’s record goalscorer. Five Premier League titles won. Scoring 20 times in five consecutive seasons. If there was ever one player that typified City’s rise, it is Sergio Aguero.
Aguero did occasionally struggle with injuries during his early days at the club – after scoring that iconic winner against QPR – but reinvented his game under Pep Guardiola in a way that some questioned whether he could do.
That he continued to smash in the goals, including 21 in 25 games in the 2017/18 season, proved that Aguero could score goals under any manager. Just get the ball to him.
3. Alan Shearer
The greatest Premier League goalscorer ever only third?
Alan Shearer’s absolute peak, in terms of numbers, came at Blackburn, as he smashed the 30-goal barrier in three consecutive seasons. One of those campaigns resulted in his first and only Premier League title.
Yes, he would have had two if Newcastle hadn’t had a horror mid-season run of form in 1996/97 that ultimately led to Kevin Keegan’s resignation. But Shearer didn’t really need trophies to show what a great he was – the 260 league goals speaks to that.
2. Wayne Rooney
Clive Tyldesley’s famous utterance, ‘Remember the name, Wayne Rooney’, went down in commentary folklore. And for good reason.
Rooney burst onto the scene aged 16 at Everton, and set the scene for another 10-plus years of Premier League dominance.
For a generation, Rooney was the inspiration – the striker that almost everyone wanted to play as in the school yard, or in the park.
He is United’s all-time top goalscorer with 253 goals, the third-highest goalscorer in Premier League history with 208, and the third-highest assist provider with 103. Whether it was providing bursting runs from deep, positioning himself perfectly in the penalty area, or laying it on a plate for team-mates, Rooney could do it all.
1. Thierry Henry
Rooney versus Thierry Henry for number one wasn’t exactly an easy decision – but we’ve gone with the Arsenal icon.
Henry won three Premier League titles with Arsenal, scored 174 Premier League goals, and netted 24 times in five consecutive seasons.
He was also named in the league’s Team of the Season in five consecutive seasons between 2000/01 and 2005/06. The Champions League narrowly evaded him at the Gunners, who lost 2-1 to Barcelona in the 2006 final, but he achieved pretty much everything else at Arsenal.
