8 legendary goalscorers we can’t believe never won a Premier League Golden Boot
When it comes to Premier League strikers, the competition for the Golden Boot has always been fierce. Nowadays Erling Haaland is following in the footsteps of greats including Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Some of the Premier League’s most iconic goalscorers never got their hands on the Golden Boot. Whether it was down to bad luck, injuries, or simply the misfortune of playing in an era crowded with world-class competition, some exceptional strikers missed out on an individual accolade they arguably deserved.
Here are eight players who, despite lighting up the Premier League, never managed to top the scoring charts.
Wayne Rooney
Starting off with the obvious one.
Rooney is Manchester United’s all-time leading scorer, was England’s all-time top goalscorer and sits third in the all-time Premier League charts. He scored 208 league goals for Manchester United and Everton, with only Alan Shearer and Harry Kane bagging more in the modern era.
Somehow, he never won the Golden Boot. That’s hard to believe given the impact he had during his time at Old Trafford, but it’s true.
Despite his brilliant overall numbers, Rooney only actually struck 20+ goals twice in the Premier League. His career-best 27 goals in 2011-12 was bettered that year by Arsenal’s Robin Van Persie (30), who was snapped up that summer to play alongside Rooney.
Fernando Torres
It’s difficult to think of many Premier League goalscorers more fearsome than peak Fernando Torres. Just ask Nemanja Vidic, who was routinely run ragged by El Nino in Manchester United’s clashes with Liverpool in the late noughties.
But ultimately the Spaniard only burned brightly relatively briefly during his time in England.
He never hit double figures for league goals during his inauspicious stint at Chelsea and only actually scored 20+ once during his prime Liverpool years, having struck 24 (33 in all competitions) during his debut 2007-08 campaign.
That season happened to be the year in which Cristiano Ronaldo went stratospheric at Old Trafford, notching 31 goals to fire Manchester United to the Premier League at Liverpool’s expense.
Torres also somehow went his entire career without winning a league title.
Diego Costa
Three things come to mind when we think of Chelsea’s last two title wins under Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
Cesc Fabregas being brilliant in midfield, Eden Hazard being brilliant on the wing and Diego Costa being a brilliant snarling b*stard up top.
Arguably the only truly successful centre-forward that Chelsea have had since two-time Golden Boot winner Didier Drogba, Costa fired Chelsea to the Premier League title with 20 goals in 2014-15 and hit the same tally when they claimed it again a couple of years later.
The former Spain international was pipped to the award by Sergio Aguero (26 league goals) the first time around and Harry Kane (27 league goals) the second time around. No shame in that.
Robbie Fowler
No club has more Golden Boots in the Premier League era than Liverpool, with seven shared between Michael Owen, Luis Suarez, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah.
Yet the man known on Merseyside as ‘God’ never claimed one for himself.
Fowler is eighth in the all-time Premier League goalscoring charts with 163 goals, peaking with 25 and 28 for the Reds in 1994-95 and 1995-96.
But the Kop hero was a little unfortunate that coincided with Shearer, arguably the best goalscorer the Premier League has ever seen, at his absolute best at Blackburn Rovers – he scored 34 and 31 goals in those two seasons.
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the top goalscorer from every Premier League season?
Jermain Defoe
One place and one goal behind Fowler in the all-time Premier League scoring charts is Defoe, ninth on 162, averaging eight a year across 19 full campaigns with West Ham, Tottenham, Portsmouth, Sunderland and Bournemouth.
When you put it like that, it’s not especially surprising. The surprising thing with Defoe is that he never managed a 20+ campaign, peaking with 18 in 2009-10 – a season in which five players scored more.
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TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every winner of the European Golden Shoe since 2000?
Frank Lampard
On the one hand, it’s not all that surprising that Lampard – very much a midfielder – never won the Golden Boot. Every player that’s ever lifted the shiny shoe has been a forward of some description.
But if ever you’d have imagined it being picked up by a midfielder, Lampard is surely the outstanding candidate. Only Shearer, Kane, Rooney, Andrew Cole and Sergio Aguero have bagged more than his tally of 177, which wasn’t solely about longevity.
Lampard was particularly prolific in Chelsea’s record-breaking 2009-10 season under Carlo Ancelotti, in which the Blues became the first Premier League side to score 100+ goals.
He scored 22 league goals that year, a number big enough to have claimed the award in other seasons, but he was outscored by team-mate Drogba (29) that year.
Les Ferdinand
Sir Les only scored one fewer Premier League goal than back-to-back Golden Boot winner Michael Owen.
But Owen required just 18 goals to jointly claim it in 1997-98 and 1998-99, a tally that Ferdinand bettered three times in his 90s heyday – 20 and 24 for QPR in 1992-93 and 1994-95 respectively and 25 in his debut season with Newcastle United, 1995-96.
A victim of circumstance.
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Ian Wright
As Fowler and Ferdinand demonstrate, competition for the Golden Boot was fierce in the Premier League’s early years. Who could compete with the outrageous totals put up by Shearer?
“Proud to call him my friend now… but when we were playing I hated him – simply because of his hunger to score goals on a weekly basis,” Wright reminisced of his rivalry with Shearer (via My Classic Football Shirts Warehouse Tour)
“You come in and you’ve scored two, Shearer scores three. If you scored two, Shearer scored one. If you score three, Shearer scores two.
“So you never catch up with him. And we’re talking about someone who had three years out of the game with real bad injuries and he’s still got 260. He’s still way out in front.
“I’m not sure really people realise the enormity of his achievement. But he’s still revered. I still think it’s going to take some real doing for someone to surpass 260.”
However, this one is a bit of a technicality. Football didn’t start in 1992, and Wright claimed the last top-flight Golden Boot before the dawn of the Premier League. He scored 29 goals for Crystal Palace and Arsenal during the 1991-92 campaign.