Now that the summer 2025 transfer window has come to a close, every Premier League club knows who their starting striker is, and there has been a huge influx of talent into the league’s top teams at the striker position.
That isn’t surprising, and it is a response to virtually all the top teams in England having a major need up top, with fans lamenting the comparative lack of striker quality in the Premier League – and world football as a whole – since the 2000s.
How do the new faces stack up against the established starters in the Premier League? Who gets snubbed? Which newcomers still have a point to prove before they can be ranked highly?
Here are the top 10 strikers in the Premier League for the 2025/26 season as we come out of a very busy summer transfer market.
10. Liam Delap, Chelsea
The 22-year-old Liam Delap is in the 85th-90th percentile among all forwards in both progressive carries and successful take-ons, and there is no doubt that the new Chelsea signing has all the tools to become a world-class striker.
A recent injury against Fulham will keep him out for a couple of months, and that will cause him to be even more off the radar, given all the attention is on Joao Pedro, who was a more expensive signing and is more ready to contribute as a starter to a club as massive as Chelsea.
But with 12 goals last season for lowly Ipswich Town, Delap already proved himself in the Premier League to a certain extent, and that puts him ahead of more experienced players like Benjamin Sesko and Randal Kolo Muani, who are still uncertain commodities in the best league in the world.
9. Jean-Philippe Mateta, Crystal Palace
Jean-Philippe Mateta was a highly underrated young player years ago in the Bundesliga for Mainz, and after being forgotten for quite some time, he was something of a late bloomer/breakout for Crystal Palace last season.
The 28-year-old turned a lot of heads around English football as a centerpiece striker for Palace, playing a crucial role in their playing style under former Bundesliga manager Oliver Glasner.
Crystal Palace don’t win the FA Cup without Mateta up top, whose physical strength and intelligence were key tenants. Mateta is one of the smoothest finishers in the Premier League, as he scored 14 goals last season to follow up from the 16 Premier League strikes he fired past goalkeepers in the 2023/24 season.
Mateta is all kinds of underrated, but that’s why even the biggest clubs in the Premier League were thinking about him as a backup option on the summer transfer market. Palace did well to keep him.
8. Evanlison, Bournemouth
Evanilson is off to a great start in the 2025/26 Premier League season, and he put the league on notice with an excellent performance against Tottenham Hotspur that would have been rewarded with more than the one goal had Guglielmo Vicario not been in spellbinding form.
A versatile creative striker who is adept at dropping deep, drawing fouls, and interchanging on the wings, Evanilson fits Bournemouth’s playing style perfectly and is one of the most underrated forwards in European football.
7. Viktor Gyokeres, Arsenal
The jury is totally out on Viktor Gyokeres in the Premier League, and the early returns on the high-priced Swedish striker have been mixed for Arsenal. But still, he already looks like a significant upgrade on the revolving door Arsenal have deployed at the 9 over the past couple of seasons.
An Arsenal with Gyokeres is substantially better than an Arsenal without Gyokeres, but whether or not he’s good enough in comparison to the elite options at Liverpool, Manchester City, and even Chelsea remains to be seen.
With 38 goals and 7 assists in the Portuguese top flight last season, as well as a famous Champions League hat trick against Manchester City, Gyokeres has the raw tools and clinical finishing to be a world-class striker in England. He just has to show he has the consistency, football IQ, and fluidity to beat Premier League defenses.
6. Chris Wood, Nottingham Forest
Chris Wood was one of the surprise breakout stars in the Premier League last season, and if Mateta has been something of a late bloomer in London, then Nottingham’s finest striker is akin to the Premier League’s Benjamin Button.
Closer to 34 years of age than 33, Wood had the best season of his career in 2024/25 with 20 goals, having scored 14 the previous season. Forest were inches away from making it to the Champions League, and even though they missed out, they were still the story of the season in English football.
And Wood was the crown jewel of a team that featured a legitimately world-class back line and top Premier League attacking midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White. Forest loaded up further this summer transfer window, so another 20 from their imposing No. 9 is far from an outrageous shout.
5. Ollie Watkins, Aston Villa
Although Chris Wood had Ollie Watkins beat as the best veteran striker in English football last season, Harry Kane’s national team backup still produced a fine season for an Aston Villa team that was admittedly markedly worse in the 2024/25 campaign.
Watkins himself was linked with a move away from Villa Park this summer, but Manchester United ultimately went with a younger option in Benjamin Sesko while Villa realized that selling Watkins after already losing Jhon Duran would not be a prudent move in the slightest.
With all due respect to Chelsea’s new star, there isn’t a more well-rounded No. 9 in the Premier League than Watkins, who has taken the mantle from current Bayern Munich star Kane.
Fluid on the ball and a skilled dribbler with great instincts as a creator, Watkins isn’t a bad goal-scorer either. The 29-year-old has scored at least 15 Premier League goals in each of the past three seasons despite also rating in the 93rd percentile among all forwards in assists.
And for those of you who like fun statistics, here’s another one. Watkins averages 0.32 interceptions per 90 minutes as a striker, which is in the 81st percentile among all forwards. That serves to highlight just how well-rounded he is for Aston Villa.
4. Hugo Ekitike, Liverpool
Now we get into the glut of the best summer transfers of the 2025 Premier League window, starting with the first big-name striker Liverpool brought in, Frenchman Hugo Ekitike.
The young forward should not get too overshadowed by the arrival of Alexander Isak, because he was more than carrying the load for the Reds to start the season with three goal contributions in his first three games, including vital plays in these victories.
Ekitike technically isn’t proven in the Premier League yet, but he belongs just a step behind Joao Pedro and Alexander Isak as newly arrived strikers for Big 6 clubs because he’s such a phenomenal athlete and finisher with the upside to do even more damage on a star-studded team like Liverpool.
Playing on the left wing away from goal shouldn’t be a problem for Ekitike either, as he had to drop deep and do a lot of the dirty work out wide to, first, help Omar Marmoush stack goals and assists and then later to carry a huge load up front for a young and adjusting Eintracht Frankfurt side after Marmoush left to Manchester City.
3. Joao Pedro, Chelsea
Arguably no player has been more impressive to start the 2025/26 Premier League season than Joao Pedro, who legitimately looks like a Premier League Player of the Season candidate alongside Cole Palmer – now a perennial contender for the award.
Chelsea made a number of intelligent signings this past summer, and maybe none look as smart as this pickup, as Pedro was one of the most underrated forwards in European football during his time at Brighton.
Pedro looks even more dangerous at Stamford Bridge on a bigger club. He has two goals and two assists in his first three fixtures with Chelsea while averaging two fouls drawn per game, and it’s highly impressive seeing how many decisive actions he has on the match despite doing so much of his work deeper and further away from goal.
2. Alexander Isak, Liverpool
A world-class striker in every sense, Swedish international Alexander Isak is running on back-to-back 20-goal seasons for Newcastle United and has been a gem since moving to the Premier League, showing a level of quality that we only saw in mere flashes in La Liga for Real Sociedad.
It seems like Isak is a player who elevates his game when things get more challenging, and while his mercurial nature lends itself to the cold slump, the moody No. 9 should, in a way, predictably up his performance further to another level in an even more demanding club.
Isak wanted to move to Liverpool, because competing for Champions League places at Newcastle, while more invigorating than toiling at La Real, didn’t appeal to him as much as competing for Champions League titles at Anfield.
Liverpool have a club culture and a fanbase ready to love Isak and shower him with praise, and that, combined with the sheer quality of his midfield and forward partners, could spur him to a season rivaling Erling Haaland’s first at the Etihad.
1. Erling Haaland, Manchester City
Although Isak was the superior striker to his Scandinavian counterpart, Erling Haaland is still, unmistakably, the best striker in the Premier League today and a goal-scoring machine.
The Norwegian superstar set the record for the most goals in a Premier League season in his very first campaign with the Citizens and won the treble, handing Pep Guardiola an elusive Champions League title sans Lionel Messi.
Haaland is one of the two biggest superstars in the Premier League alongside Mohamed Salah, except he’s the one who is still yet to hit his prime. So much hinges on how new attacking midfielders Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders integrate into the squad to give Haaland more tangible support than what he got last season, but there’s no question that when Man City are functioning properly, Haaland is a good bet to score 30 in a season.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2011. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has contributed to sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. Joe’s work has appeared in ESPN, Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling, respectively.