Manchester City have a long history of identifying ridiculously good strikers, but Alexander Isak and Mo Salah are holding their own among the greatest ever.
These are the best goalscoring ratios of every player with over 50 Premier League goals.
10) Edin Dzeko – 142 minutes per goalThe most memorable and meaningful of Dzeko’s 50 Premier League goals was a neat synopsis of an entire Manchester City career spent in the shadow of Sergio Aguero. Without his equaliser against QPR at the Etihad in May 2012, there would have been no winner.
That was one of two titles Dzeko helped deliver as a support act. Two years later, Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho picked the Bosnian as his Player of the Year ahead of Luis Suarez as Dzeko “was the third striker at the beginning of the season and when the team needed him, in crucial moments, he made the difference”.
Even in that season his contributions in pipping Liverpool to the post were completely overshadowed by the exploits of Yaya Toure, but it was Dzeko who scored five goals in the last four games to help Manchester City hold their nerve.
9) Robin van Persie – 140 minutes per goalBefore Erling Haaland managed the feat in consecutive seasons, Van Persie was the last player to win the Golden Boot and Premier League title in the same campaign. For seven years until Anthony Martial got off his arse in June 2020, he was the most recent player to score a Premier League hat-trick for Manchester United. He is still one of just three alongside Alan Shearer and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to win the Golden Boot with two different teams.
The Dutchman made an inauspicious start in England, claiming a modest return of 48 goals in his first six Premier League seasons. But between 2010 and 2013 Van Persie was almost untouchable, breaching 30 goals for Arsenal to awaken the little boy inside of him screaming ‘Manchester United’, then 26 to deliver what might forever remain Old Trafford’s last league title.
Even under David Moyes after a Sir Alex Ferguson hospital pass, Van Persie scored 11 in 18.
8) Luis Suarez – 139 minutes per goalIt sounds impressive enough, but in games exclusively against Norwich and John Ruddy, it was 40.4 minutes per goal.
There was a time when 31 goals and 13 assists in a Premier League season was generationally phenomenal but some Liverpool forwards wouldn’t settle for that in mid-January nowadays. Suarez broke a fair few records in setting that bar but barely any of them still stand more than a decade since his departure.
All in all, 54 goals in 66 Premier League games across his final two Liverpool seasons earned him a move to Barcelona but no trophies; the League Cup medal Suarez earned the campaign before his transformation into elite forward for beating Cardiff on penalties – a shootout in which he did not feature – will take pride of place on his Miami mantelpiece.
7) Mo Salah – 130 minutes per goal
A ridiculous footballer who by season’s end should be fourth in the all-time Premier League scorers list. Aguero is two goals ahead while Andy Cole sits a further three in front.
And this includes two goals in 530 Premier League minutes for Chelsea. If this is to be his final campaign for Liverpool, Salah has secured some remarkable bookends: 32 goals and ten assists in 2017/18, then 25 and 17 respectively thus far in 2024/25.
6) Ruud van Nistelrooy – 128 minutes per goalHe quite foolishly timed his peak at the same time A Certain Frenchman was va-va-vooming the shuddering balls out of Premier League defences in north London, but Van Nistelrooy more than held his own in a comparatively lesser team.
The Dutchman set a record for scoring in consecutive Premier League games in January 2002, which he himself proceeded to break by August 2003 before having to wait 12 more years for Jamie Vardy to pick up the slack.
But ultimately only a fool would argue Ferguson was wrong for picking Cristiano Ronaldo over Van Nistelrooy when the pair clashed in 2006. Manchester United won one Premier League title during the latter’s ridiculous five seasons of scoring 95 goals in 150 Premier League games, then three in a row immediately after his exit.
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5) Harry Kane – 126 minutes per goalIt will remain phenomenal until his return on loan as a grizzled, trophy-hoarding veteran that one of Kane’s most prolific seasons was his last, when he scored 30 Premier League goals for a largely managerless Spurs side which finished 8th and was eliminated early from every cup competition, and he still missed out on his fourth career Golden Boot by six goals because of Erling sodding Haaland.
There are only so many times you can perform and produce so laughably far above the station of your boyhood club before deciding to branch out in a desperate bid to adorn a ludicrous career with silverware more illustrious than the Visit Malta Cup.
But he bloody well tried. Kane finished 2nd with 29 goals, 3rd with 30, 4th with 17, 5th with 21, 6th with 18, 7th with 23 and 8th with 30, and would have swapped any of them for 1st with none.
4) Thierry Henry – 122 minutes per goalEven in a final full season decimated by injury Henry reached double figures for goals from 17 games, then when he returned on a painfully short loan in 2012 the Frenchman scored once in 94 entirely substitute minutes.
No player has won the Golden Boot more often, consecutive European Golden Shoes for a Premier League club before or since, nor scored more goals at a single stadium. And he chucked the 14th-most Premier League assists into an often irresistible equation too.
3) Alexander Isak – 116 minutes per goalThe Henry comparison has been made often and it is a conversation in which Isak does not feel completely out of place, which is testament to a quality destined to be perennially linked with a £150m move to Arsenal he will never make. The Swede is lacking the same creative edge as the Gunners legend but in terms of prolific excellence, Isak is on track to match the greats.
Newcastle would be screwed without him.
2) Sergio Aguero – 108 minutes per goalHe scored twice in both his first and last Premier League games, then a bucketload of times in between. Aguero had six 20-goal seasons and won the title fives times, yet obviously his only Golden Boot came in the same season Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea refused to relinquish top spot.
The most recent of five players to score five goals in a single Premier League game, only 39 have scored more times in the 136-year history of the English top flight. And that really is quite mad.
1) Erling Haaland – 92 minutes per goal“We cannot replace him. We cannot,” said a deeply emotional Pep Guardiola after Aguero’s final league game. That might be true but Haaland has given it a ridiculously good go.