As Erling
Haaland chases down yet another goalscoring record, we chart
the players who have reached 100 Premier
League goals in the fewest games.

Fastest
Players to 100 Premier League Goals

1. Alan Shearer – 124 games
2. Harry Kane – 141 games
3. Sergio Agüero – 147 games
4. Thierry Henry – 160 games
5. Mohamed Salah – 162 games
6. Ian Wright – 173 games
7. Robbie Fowler – 175 games
8. Les Ferdinand – 178 games
=9. Michael Owen – 185 games
=9. Andrew Cole – 185 games

Alan
Shearer: 124 Games

Alan Shearer’s overall goalscoring record in the Premier League
could have been even better had the competition been rebranded a
few years earlier, because he scored a fair few goals for
Southampton in the old First Division before 1992.

But he wouldn’t be top of this particular list were it not for
the timing of said rebrand, which coincided perfectly with his
explosion in front of goal before he became the greatest goalscorer
the Premier League has ever seen.

Shearer’s first goals in the competition came on the opening day
of its first season on 15 August 1992, as he scored twice in
Blackburn’s
3-3 draw at Crystal
Palace.

He raced to 50 goals in 66 games – putting him third in the list
of
the fastest players to their half-century of goals – and then
put his foot on the accelerator by scoring another 50 in his next
58 appearances in the competition. He scored his 100th Premier
League goal in his 124th game, a 2-1 win over Tottenham
on 30 December 1995.

For now, his record still stands today.

Harry
Kane: 141 Games

Harry
Kane took a while to get going at Tottenham. He was a
relatively late developer, only properly nailing down a place in
the first team after he’d turned 21.

What is most impressive about his position in this list,
however, is that he started off scoring goals fairly slowly. He
scored just three times in his first 19 Premier League appearances,
and took 90 games to reach his half-century. That’s 25 games slower
than Andrew Cole, for example, and 42 games slower than Erling
Haaland.

But things went goal crazy for Kane after that. He scored his
next 50 Premier League goals in just 51 games, a run that included
six hat-tricks, to make it to 100 in 141 appearances.

His 100th goal was a dramatic 95th-minute equaliser from the
penalty spot in a 2-2 draw at Liverpool in February 2018.

Sergio
Agüero: 147 Games

Manchester City legend Sergio Agüero got off to a
lightning-quick start in front of goal in England, with eight goals
in his first five games in the Premier League. He couldn’t keep
that goalscoring rate up for long, though, and he ended up taking
81 games to reach his half-century. In the middle of that run, he
endured a period in which he scored just eight goals in 25 games at
the end of 2012 and the first half of 2013.

He then found his goalscoring touch with devastating effect,
firing City to their second Premier League title in 2013-14 and
storming to 100 goals in 147 games.

Agüero netted for the 100th time in the competition in a 1-1
draw at Newcastle
on 19 April 2016 as Manuel Pellegrini’s City reign petered out with
a disappointing fourth-place finish in 2015-16.

Thierry
Henry: 160 Games

A player who would go on to become one of the best and most
important players in Arsenal’s
history made an inauspicious start to life in England.

Thierry Henry got no goals or assists in his first
seven Premier League games, and even after he scored the only goal
in a 1-0 win over Southampton
in his eighth appearance in September 1999, he then went another
four games without a goal.

After that, though, there was little stopping him.

He would go on to reach 50 goals in 83 games, before making it
to 100 in 160 appearances. His century-reaching goal was the first
of a brace – also against Southampton – in February 2004 as he
fired Arsenal to what remains the only ever ‘invincible’ Premier
League season by any team.

Mohamed
Salah: 162 Games

Mohamed Salah began life in England at Chelsea, where he scored
just two goals in 13 Premier League appearances in 2014 and 2015,
before his 2018 move to Liverpool where, as you well know, his
goalscoring took off.

Salah needed just 151 games to reach 100 goals for Liverpool, a
record that would have put him one place higher in this list, but
we’re not just looking at single-club records here, and in fact,
Salah needed 162 games to make it to his century of Premier League
goals when you include his start at Chelsea. He scored his 100th
goal in a 3-0 win over Leeds United on 12 September 2021.

Will
Erling Haaland Break the Record?

At the time of writing, Manchester City forward Erling Haaland
has 93 goals in 103 Premier League games, meaning he has to score
seven goals in his next 20 appearances in the competition if he is
to break Shearer’s record.

He already holds the record for the fewest appearances needed to
reach 50 Premier League goals, and it appears pretty likely he’ll
break the record for the fewest games needed to reach 100 goals in
the competition, too.

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