Former Newcastle United midfielder James Milner has announced his retirement from football, 18 years after leaving the club.
James Milner has announced his retirement following a season in which he broke the Premier League appearance record.
Milner is one of four players to pass 600 Premier League appearances, with Gareth Barry setting the previous record of 653 across spells with Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Brom.
Ryan Giggs played 632 times for Manchester United and Frank Lampard racked up 609 games – 429 of them for Chelsea with spells too at West Ham and City.
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Surprisingly, there are no goalkeepers in the 600 club, with former Liverpool, Villa, West Ham, City and Portsmouth stopper David James fifth all-time on 572 appearances.
The rest of the top 10 consists of another former Newcastle midfielder, Gary Speed (535), plus Emile Heskey (514), Mark Schwarzer – the only player from outside Britain with 500-plus appearances, also ending up on 514 – Jamie Carragher with 508 and Phil Neville 505.
Three other players have broken the 500 barrier – Rio Ferdinand and Steven Gerrard with 504 apiece and another former Magpie Sol Campbell on 503, though only seven of those came during his time on Tyneside.
With Ashley Young (485) also retiring this summer following promotion with Ipswich, the leading active Premier League player on the list is Brentford’s Jordan Henderson on 463.
Giggs, Carragher and Gerrard are the only three players to make 500-plus appearances for a single club, while Barry still holds Villa’s Premier League appearance record with 365.
Barry also remains a long way clear of the pack with 54,439 minutes played in the Premier League. Milner ranks 12th by that measure on 40,876 according to the league’s official website.
James Milner’s career
Milner played 48 times for his boyhood club Leeds, where he became at the time the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer, aged 16 years and 356 days, and second-youngest player – he remains second on the former list behind James Vaughan (16 years, 271 days). He remains Leeds’ youngest ever competitive goalscorer.
Milner joined Newcastle for £5million in July 2004 as a teenager and went on to make 94 Premier League appearances for the club.
The midfielder also appeared 100 times for Villa, 27 of them on loan in the 2005-06 season before joining permanently in 2008.
His longest and most successful spells came with five seasons at Manchester City, where he made 147 appearances and won two Premier League titles, and eight at Liverpool featuring 230 games and a third title.
He played 39 times for Brighton after joining in the summer of 2023, with the 2024-25 season interrupted by injuries and limited to four appearances.
He has scored 56 goals – 19 for Liverpool, 13 for City, 12 for Villa, six for Newcastle, five for Leeds and one for Brighton – and added 90 assists to rank 10th on the all-time Premier League list.
Shay Given is Newcastle’s leading Premier League appearance maker with 354 appearances for the club between 1997 and 2009. The current United player with the most Premier League appearances is Jacob Murphy with 218.
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