Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has recently moved up to joint fifth in the Premier League’s all-time scoring charts – but he isn’t quite so high in the list if you don’t count penalties.
When you take away spot kicks entirely, which players have the most impressive goalscoring returns? Some surprising names feature amongst the usual suspects.
Here are the Premier League’s all-time top 10 non-penalty goalscorers.
10. Robbie Fowler — 146
It’s no wonder that Fowler is known as God in the red half of Merseyside, given he scored 128 of his total 163 Premier League goals for boyhood club Liverpool. Only seven players have scored more Premier League goals for a single club.
Seventeen of Fowler’s 163 Premier League goals were from 12 yards. He also missed five, but fortunately for him they were rarely costly.
9. Jermain Defoe — 148
Defoe scored 162 goals in 496 Premier League appearances across a 17-year stretch that saw him represent West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Portsmouth, Sunderland and Bournemouth in the English top flight. Remarkable longevity.
The former England international wasn’t always his side’s first-choice penalty-taken. He actually missed as many (four) as he scored in the league for Spurs, a tiny proportion of his total 91 league goals for the club.
8. Les Ferdinand — 149
Sir Les stands 12th in the Premier League’s all-time top-scoring charts, behind the likes of Michael Owen and Frank Lampard.
He bumps up a few places in this ranking, because not one of his 149 Premier League goals was scored from the penalty spot.
Ferdinand is the only player in this top 10 that never scored a Premier League penalty, while Emile Heskey is the only other member of the 100 club that shares that distinction.
“Now, I sit here and regret it,” reflected the former Newcastle United and Tottenham striker in an interview with The Athletic.
“And, as I’m having this conversation, I’m thinking, ‘You idiot. Why didn’t you take them?’ I was young and I thought differently back then. But it was a silly thought process.”
7. Mohamed Salah — 150
Liverpool’s Egyptian King recently moved fifth, level with Sergio Aguero, in the all-time Premier League scoring charts – following his pair of coolly-dispatched spot-kicks against Southampton.
But 34 of Salah’s 184 Premier League goals have been penalties, leaving him seventh in the ranking for non-penalty goals.
Only two men – Lampard and the man at the top of this list – have scored more Premier League goals from the penalty spot than Salah.
6. Thierry Henry — 152
Just 25 (14%) of the Frenchman’s 177 Premier League goals for Arsenal were spot-kicks.
That’s a pretty spectacular return from the man many consider to be the greatest in Premier League history.
Most Goals plus assists Premier League history Mohamed Salah Thierry Henry Alan Shearer
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5. Sergio Aguero — 157
The Argentinian scored 48 penalties in his career and missed 14. None were more memorable than his last, the Panenka that went spectacularly wrong in Manchester City’s 2-1 defeat to Chelsea back in May 2021.
Generally, though, he was pretty reliable from the spot. Aguero scored 27 of the 33 Premier League penalties he took – an above-average 81% conversion rate.
He was also pretty handy from open play, too. No overseas player has scored more Premier League goals, with and without penalties included.
4. Harry Kane — 180
Kane has added another string to his bow since departing the Premier League for the Bundesliga. He’s become dead-eyed marksmen from 12 yards, scoring his last 30 penalties for club and country since that miss against France at the 2022 World Cup.
The England captain boasts a remarkable 100% success rate from the 21 penalties he’s taken for Bayern Munich.
Even before refining that side of his game to perfection, Kane was always pretty reliable. He scored 33 of the 37 (89%) Premier League penalties he took for Spurs.
He also scored 180 non-penalty goals. Not bad going. Should he return to England for another stint in the future, he’ll be eyeing up a place at the top of this list.
3. Wayne Rooney — 185
Manchester United’s all-time top goalscorer stands level with Henry, 10th, in the Premier League’s all-time penalty goals list on 23.
Rooney scored fewer Premier League penalties than Matt Le Tissier, Mark Noble, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Jamie Vardy.
2. Andy Cole — 186
“He [Cole] made goalscoring look very easy when it is not!” Alan Shearer told the Premier League’s official website when Andy Cole was inducted into the competition’s Hall Of Fame.
“He was an instinctive finisher, one of those where he just didn’t have to think, it just looked as if it came naturally to him. Scoring goals from every single position – from different angles, left foot, right foot, volleys, everything. He was as good as there was at that particular time when he was playing.
“When you look at the goals he scored and the number, it is phenomenal. You see why he has the respect that he has within the game. We all understand what a great goal scorer he was.”
Cole stands fourth in the all-time goalscoring charts, having scored 73 fewer goals than Shearer, but he’s second in the non-penalty rankings – and only 18 behind the record holder on that front.
“He never took penalties, never wanted to take penalties,” Shearer added.
“I’ve had that conversation with him, and I find it difficult to understand why. I mean, his goals record is phenomenal anyway, but you can imagine how much better it would have been if he had taken more penalties.”
Andy Cole celebrates scoring for Manchester United against Newcastle. St James' Park, December 1997.
QUIZ: Can you name all 12 clubs Andy Cole played for in his career?
1. Alan Shearer — 205
The one and only.
Shearer has scored more penalty goals in the Premier League with 55 – 12 more than anyone else. That’s partly responsible for his comfortable lead atop the overall, all-time scoring charts – 47 ahead of second-place Harry Kane on 260.
But he’s also ahead of the competition when it comes to non-penalty goes, having scored 205. That’s still 19 more than anyone else.
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TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the top 25 penalty goalscorers in Premier League history?