The best Premier League goalscorers after 30

Vardy was at Fleetwood Town, then a non-league club, until Leicester signed him in 2012 at 25. He made his Premier League debut at 27 and won the league at 29, in 2015/16. By the time he turned 30 he had spent far fewer seasons at the top level than most strikers of his age, and his legs showed it. Most of his Premier League goals came after 30, which is almost unheard of for a player whose game was built on pace.

Wright is the earlier version of the same story. He did not become a professional until he joined Crystal Palace at 21, and he was 28 when the Premier League began in 1992. His 98 goals after 30 were scored between 1993/94 and 1998/99, mostly for Arsenal, where he broke the club's all-time scoring record in 1997. Like Vardy, he came to the top level late and with fewer miles on the clock than his peers.

Gianfranco Zola is a different kind of late arrival. He joined Chelsea from Parma in 1996 at 30, so every one of his 59 Premier League goals counts here. Paolo Di Canio, signed by Sheffield Wednesday at 29 and then West Ham, has 55 after 30 in a similar way. Both were Italian forwards who reached the Premier League near the end of their careers, Di Canio by way of Celtic, and played some of their best football there.

Shearer's 84 were all for Newcastle, from 2000/01 until he retired in 2006. Injuries had taken some of his pace by then, and he scored more with his head and from close range than in his Blackburn years. His total of 260 Premier League goals is still the record, and almost a third of them came after 30.

Lampard is the only midfielder in the top ten. His 82 goals after 30 came for Chelsea and, in a final season, Manchester City, and they reflect a player whose goals had always come from late runs into the box rather than pace. Gus Poyet, with 54 for Chelsea and Tottenham, is the other midfielder in the twenty, and his goals came the same way.

Teddy Sheringham's 77 span more than a decade, from 1996/97 to 2006/07, across Tottenham, Manchester United and Portsmouth, and he was still scoring in the Premier League at 40. He was never quick, so age took less from him than from most forwards. His game was positioning and passing, and those last.

Salah's 73 goals since 2022/23 have come in only four seasons, the fastest rate of anyone on the table. If he plays on at Liverpool at anything like that pace, he will pass Vardy. He is also, like Vardy and Wright, a player who arrived at the top level relatively late, having spent his early twenties at Basel, Fiorentina and Roma, with a first Premier League spell at Chelsea in which he barely played.

Danny Welbeck has 46 for Brighton since 2020/21, after a career at Manchester United and Arsenal that was repeatedly interrupted by injuries. He has scored more Premier League goals at Brighton than at either Manchester United or Arsenal, which is the late-starter pattern arrived at by a different route.

Chris Wood's 45, mostly for Nottingham Forest, are the most surprising entry. Wood spent much of his career in the Championship and at clubs that went up and down. In his thirties he scored more regularly than at any point before, and his presence on the table shows how much a striker's numbers depend on whether his team creates chances for him.

Four of the twenty were 30 or older when the Premier League began, or turned 30 in its second season, so every goal they scored in it counts here. Peter Beardsley (59, for Newcastle, Everton and Bolton), Ian Rush (48, for Liverpool and Leeds) and Mark Bright (50, mostly for Sheffield Wednesday) were all past 30 in August 1992. Mark Hughes turned 30 during 1993/94 and his 49 came for Manchester United, Chelsea and Southampton.

That makes their rows a slightly different kind of record. They are the players who were good enough to keep their places when the new league arrived with its money and its foreign signings, at an age when most of their contemporaries were dropping down the divisions. Beardsley in particular played some of his best football in Kevin Keegan's Newcastle side of the mid-1990s, in his early thirties.

Some of the greatest Premier League strikers do not appear here at all. Thierry Henry left for Barcelona at 29. Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler had scored most of their goals by 30. Fernando Torres's Premier League years were mostly before 30 too. Pace-based careers tend to end early, and the table reflects it.

For Top 10, think of the strikers who were still scoring when you expected them to stop. Mark Bright, Mark Hughes, Ian Rush and Les Ferdinand are the 1990s names that complete it. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, with 47 at Chelsea, Middlesbrough and Charlton, is the one people forget.