Top goalscorers in English football's First Division / Premier League, 1888-2024

In the English Premier League, the Golden Boot is awarded to the player(s) who scores the most league goals throughout the season. Since the 1888/89 season, the year of the first top flight season in English football, 109 different individuals have been named "top goal scorer" over 126 seasons. In 2022/23, the Golden Boot was won by Manchester City's Erling Haaland, who scored 36 goals in his debut season to set a new all-time record for the Premier League. Haaland repeated this feat in the following season, with 27 goals, even though he missed almost two months of action due to injury.

Premier League records

Current records are generally given in the context of the past three decades, as the total number of games was reduced from 42 to 38 per season in 1995 (in the Premier League's fourth season). In the Premier League era, Thierry Henry has won the Golden Boot more times than anybody else, winning this accolade four times in five seasons with Arsenal. Alan Shearer, who won three consecutive Golden Boots in the 90s, is the Premier League's all-time top goal scorer, with 260 goals. Interestingly, Wayne Rooney, who is the Premier League's second-highest goal scorer of all time, never won a Golden Boot. 

All-time records

Outside the Premier League era, Jimmy Greaves has been the top scorer in England more times than any other player, appearing at the top of the list six times between 1958 and 1969, during his career with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspurs. Derby County's Steve Bloomer finished five seasons as the league's top scorer between 1895 and 1904. The highest ever tally in a single season was sixty goals, which was scored by Everton's Dixie Dean in the 1927/28 season. Greaves, Bloomer, and Dean are also the three top goalscorers of all time in the English league, with 357, 314 and 310 goals respectively.

Players from Tottenham have been named top scorer more than players from any other club, appearing 13 times on this list. 19 different nationalities are represented here, and although the vast majority of players are English, there were 16 times where the top scorer in the First Division was Scottish. A much wider variety of nationalities has been represented in recent years, including in the 2018/19 season where it was shared between three players from different African nations.