The goalkeepers with the most Premier League appearances

James's career had three distinct phases: a young goalkeeper at Liverpool in the 1990s, a decade moving between Villa, West Ham and Manchester City, and an Indian summer at Portsmouth, where he won the FA Cup in 2008 and played on until he was 39. His total is the product of that last phase as much as the first two. Few goalkeepers are still first choice in their late thirties at a club in the top half.

Schwarzer's 514 are mostly for Middlesbrough and Fulham, and his last Premier League games came for Leicester when he was 42. Friedel's 450 span Blackburn, Aston Villa and Tottenham, and include the Premier League record for consecutive appearances, 310 in a row between 2004 and 2012. He was still on Tottenham's books in his mid-forties.

Jääskeläinen is the least famous of the top six. His 436 games came for Bolton, where he was first choice through the club's best Premier League years, and West Ham. A goalkeeper at a mid-table club rarely makes headlines, but he does play every week, and that is what this table rewards.

Shay Given's 451 tell a similar story. Most of them came in twelve seasons at Newcastle from 1997, before he moved to Manchester City in 2009, then Aston Villa and Stoke. Joe Hart's 340 show the opposite: he was first choice at City through their title wins of 2012 and 2014, then lost his place when Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016. Hart was 29, the age at which James and Schwarzer still had more than a decade to go, and his Premier League total grew only slowly after that, in single seasons at West Ham and Burnley.

Petr Čech is fifth with 443 for Chelsea and Arsenal, and he holds a record that matters more to goalkeepers than appearances: the most clean sheets in Premier League history, 202. His total would be higher still without the fractured skull he suffered in 2006, which kept him out for three months and left him wearing a protective cap for the rest of his career.

Two of the twenty played their whole Premier League career for one club. David de Gea made 415 appearances for Manchester United between 2011/12 and 2022/23, arriving from Atlético Madrid at 20 and leaving at 32. Hugo Lloris made 361 for Tottenham, captaining them through most of the Pochettino years. Both left in their early thirties, which is why neither is higher. A goalkeeper who stays at one club often leaves when a new manager wants a younger replacement, rather than when his body tells him to.

Manchester United have three of the twenty: De Gea, Edwin van der Sar (313, mostly for United after four seasons at Fulham) and Schmeichel. Between them they cover most of the club's Premier League history. The six years between Schmeichel leaving and van der Sar arriving were spent looking for a successor, and of the goalkeepers United tried, only Tim Howard reached this table, mostly with appearances made later at Everton.

The English eight are James, Ben Foster (390), Paul Robinson (375), Nigel Martyn (372), Jordan Pickford (362), David Seaman (344), Joe Hart (340) and Ian Walker (312). The other twelve came from ten countries, with two each from the United States (Friedel and Tim Howard) and Denmark (Schmeichel and Thomas Sørensen).

That mix appeared early. Outfield positions in the 1990s were still mostly filled by British and Irish players, but clubs looked abroad for goalkeepers sooner: Schmeichel arrived in 1991, and Schwarzer and Friedel both in 1997.

Seaman's 344 understate his career more than anyone's here. He was already 28 when the Premier League began, and had spent the previous decade in the old First Division with Birmingham, QPR and Arsenal. Martyn's 372 have a similar story: he was 26 in 1992 and had played more than three hundred league games before the Premier League existed.

Jordan Pickford is the only active goalkeeper in the twenty, with 362 for Everton and Sunderland since 2015/16. At around 32 games a season, he would pass Schwarzer in about five more years and James in about seven, which would take him to roughly 39. That is entirely possible for a goalkeeper. Whether Everton, or any club, keeps choosing him that long is the real question.

Paul Robinson, eleventh with 375 for Leeds, Tottenham and Blackburn, has a claim no other goalkeeper here shares: he scored a Premier League goal, a long free kick for Tottenham against Watford in 2007 that bounced over Ben Foster, who is ninth on this same table.

For Top 10, this board rewards anyone who remembers mid-table goalkeepers. James, Čech and De Gea are easy. Jääskeläinen, Thomas Sørensen (364, at Aston Villa, Sunderland and Stoke) and Ian Walker of Tottenham and Leicester are the names that finish the round.