499, 399, 199: the Premier League milestones that got away
Finished careers that stopped a single game or goal short of a round number, and what got in the way.
Football has no official interest in round numbers. Nobody is awarded anything for a five-hundredth game, and a player who reaches 500 has done exactly one more match's work than one who stops on 499. Supporters care anyway, and so do players, which is why the careers that end one short have a peculiar fascination.
The table lists every finished Premier League career that stopped one short of a big appearance mark (200, 300, 400 or 500) or one short of 50, 100, 150 or 200 goals. It is a short list, and the top of it is about as famous as Premier League footballers get.
Players still active are left out, since their numbers can still move. Everyone here has played his last game in the competition.
| # | Player | Total | Milestone | Clubs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Scholes1994/95–2012/13Milestone: 499 games, one short of 500 | 499 | 499 games, one short of 500 | Manchester United |
| 2 | Tim Howard2003/04–2015/16Milestone: 399 games, one short of 400 | 399 | 399 games, one short of 400 | Everton, Manchester United |
| 3 | Federico Fernández2014/15–2021/22Milestone: 199 games, one short of 200 | 199 | 199 games, one short of 200 | Swansea City, Newcastle United |
| 4 | Joe Allen2011/12–2017/18Milestone: 199 games, one short of 200 | 199 | 199 games, one short of 200 | Liverpool, Stoke City, Swansea City |
| 5 | Matt Elliott1996/97–2003/04Milestone: 199 games, one short of 200 | 199 | 199 games, one short of 200 | Leicester City |
| 6 | Les Ferdinand1992/93–2004/05Milestone: 149 goals, one short of 150 | 149 | 149 goals, one short of 150 | Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers, Newcastle United |
| 7 | Gary McAllister1992/93–2001/02Milestone: 49 goals, one short of 50 | 49 | 49 goals, one short of 50 | Leeds United, Coventry City, Liverpool |
| 8 | Nolberto Solano1998/99–2007/08Milestone: 49 goals, one short of 50 | 49 | 49 goals, one short of 50 | Newcastle United, Aston Villa, West Ham United |
| Seasons 1992/93 to 2021/22 | ||||
Appearance marks are 200, 300, 400 and 500; goal marks are 50, 100, 150 and 200. Rows are ordered by the total itself, so the biggest near-miss comes first.
Scholes and the missing 500th
Paul Scholes played 499 Premier League games, every one of them for Manchester United, across nineteen seasons from 1994/95 to 2012/13. He scored 107 goals in them. And for a while the number was nowhere near 499: when he first retired in 2011 he had 466 to his name.
The comeback in January 2012 is well remembered. What is less often said is that it added 33 more appearances across two half-seasons, 17 and then 16, and that it stopped one game short of a total only thirteen players have reached in the competition. James Milner, Gareth Barry and Ryan Giggs are at the head of that group of thirteen; Scholes is the nearest anyone has come without joining it.
It is hard to imagine he minded. He was a player famously uninterested in the trappings of the game, and his second retirement came with a league title. But the number is a neat illustration of how arbitrary these marks are. A single extra substitute appearance in any of nineteen seasons and he would be on the other side of the line.
Howard and the missing 400th
Tim Howard finished on 399, one game short of a line that only a few dozen players have reached in the competition. For a goalkeeper the total is even more unusual, because a keeper's appearances come one per match: there is no coming off the bench for ten minutes to tick the count along, and a first-choice keeper tends to play every week or not at all.
His record is built on availability. In this data he played all 38 league games in four straight seasons for Everton, from 2008/09 to 2011/12, and at least 32 in every full season he spent at Goodison Park until the last one. Only in 2015/16, when he made 25 appearances and lost his place for part of the season, did the number tail off, and that is where the 400th game went.
He made 45 appearances for Manchester United and 354 for Everton, over thirteen seasons, before leaving for Major League Soccer in 2016. Among the 399 is a single goal, a long clearance in 2011/12 that bounced over the goalkeeper at the other end. Few keepers have a Premier League goal; fewer still finished one game short of four hundred.
He is part of a small crowd just under the line. Lee Bowyer and Theo Walcott both finished on 397, and Kevin Nolan, on 401, is the only finished career sitting just above it. Four hundred Premier League games is a total that a fair number of good players drift towards in their mid-thirties and then fall a few matches short of.
Elliott, Allen and Fernández: the 199s
Three players finished on 199. Matt Elliott made all of his for Leicester City between 1996/97 and 2003/04, a centre-half who scored 22 goals from the back. His record has a hole in 2002/03, when Leicester were out of the top flight; they came back for one season and went down again, which is roughly where the 200th game went.
Joe Allen's 199 are split three ways: 36 for Swansea City, 91 for Liverpool and 72 for Stoke City, between 2011/12 and 2017/18. Stoke's relegation in 2018 ended his Premier League career at the age most midfielders are at their peak. Federico Fernández took 117 games at Swansea and 82 at Newcastle United between 2014/15 and 2021/22 to get to the same place.
Below them come the goal near-misses. Les Ferdinand scored 149 Premier League goals for six clubs, the last of them in 2004/05; Michael Owen, directly above him, finished on exactly 150. Nolberto Solano stopped on 49, a midfielder who took ten seasons, most of them at Newcastle United, to get there.
Ferdinand's miss is the more poignant, because the goal marks are so much harder to reach than the appearance ones. Only eleven players have scored 150 Premier League goals and just three have reached 200: Alan Shearer, Harry Kane and Wayne Rooney. Teddy Sheringham, on 146, is another who ended within a few of the 150.
How often the big numbers are missed
Not very often, as it turns out, and mainly because so few careers get close in the first place. Only one finished career has stopped on 499, and none on exactly 500. Tim Howard stopped on 399, and one career finished on exactly 400. Three finished on 199 and four on exactly 200. At 300 nobody finished on the number or one short of it.
In other words, a player who gets within one of a big appearance mark is about as likely to finish on it as to miss it, and the sample is so small that the odd famous name makes the whole pattern. There is no sign that players are being kept on to reach a milestone, or that managers are quietly sending someone on for one last game. The numbers are mostly where careers happen to end.
For 501, this table is useful in a way most record lists are not. Scholes's 499 is far too big to throw in one visit, but a total like 49 is exactly the sort of modest, certain number that wins a leg at the finish, and two of the names here, Gary McAllister and Solano, are worth precisely that on Premier League goals. The trick of the game is knowing small totals to the exact figure. A career that ended one short of a round number is easy to remember for exactly that reason, which makes Solano a better dart than most strikers.
The short versionA round number is a fact about our counting, not about the footballer. Scholes on 499 is the proof: nobody thinks less of him for the missing game, and nobody forgets the number either.