Football
Most goals scored in single Premier League season: Erling Haaland breaks Alan Shearer, Andy Cole’s record
With 36 goals, Manchester City's Erling Haaland holds the record for the most goals scored in single Premier League season.
Since the Premier League’s inception in 1992, the competition, England’s top-division football league, has been home to some of the greatest goal-scorers in the history of the game.
England legend Alan Shearer, with 260 goals, is the all-time top scorer in Premier League history. For many years, Alan Shearer was also a joint holder of the record for most Premier League goals in a single season, with 34, alongside former Manchester United star Andy Cole.
But Erling Haaland's second-half strike against West Ham in Manchester City's 33rd match of the 2022-23 season saw the Norwegian move past the pair to register 35 goals in a Premier League season. Erling Haaland eventually finished with 36 goals from 35 matches - six strikes more than Harry Kane, who finished second in the top scorer's list.
Alan Shearer’s 34-goal EPL season came in the 1994-95 campaign while playing for Blackburn Rovers. Former Manchester United legend Andy Cole achieved the feat in the preceding season (1993-94) with Newcastle United - a team which would later become Shearer’s own home.
Alan Shearer, interestingly, scored 31 goals in the 1993-94 season and was only denied the Golden Boot by Cole. Shearer returned the next season to win both the Golden Boot and the EPL title with Blackburn.
Nicknamed Smokey by fans, Alan Shearer is the only player to have scored 30-plus goals in a single EPL season multiple times, three to be exact. Besides 1993-94 and 1994-95, he also finished with a 31-goal tally in the 1995-96 season.
The 1995-96 season, in fact, was a special case. Before that season, the EPL was a 22-team affair, meaning a player could play a maximum of 42 matches in a season. Both Shearer and Cole’s 34-goal exploits, hence, came in 42-game seasons.
Starting from the 1995-96 season, the Premier League became a 20-team league, which brought down the maximum number of matches possible to play to 38 - the same as it is today. Shearer’s 31 goals in 1995-96 stayed as the benchmark for the most goals scored in a 38-game Premier League season for a long time.
Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Liverpool’s Luis Suarez managed to match Shearer’s tally of 31 goals in 2007-8 and 2013-14, respectively, but neither managed to surpass the Englishman.
It took Egypt’s Mohamed Salah, who scored 32 goals for Liverpool in the 2017-18 season, to finally break through the 31-goal barrier in a 38-game season. Many sources often credited Mohamed Salah as being the highest goal scorer in a single Premier League season since the 38-game format is the one followed in the PL currently.
Four more players, Sunderland’s Kevin Phillips (1999-2000), Arsenal’s Thierry Henry (2003-04) and Robin van Persie (2011-12) and Tottenham’s Harry Kane (2017-18 and 2022-23) have also logged 30-goal seasons in the Premier League.
However, now Erling Haaland holds the record for the most goals scored in single Premier League season with 36. Unsurprisingly, Haaland was named the Premier League Player of the Season for the 2022-23 campaign.
