Who has Scored the Most Penalties in Premier League History?

Since the top flight of English football was converted into the Premier League in 1992, 2,446 penalties have been awarded with 2,029 being converted by the various penalty takers, 103 being missed and 314 being saved.

Here, we take a look at who has scored the most penalties in the history of the Premier League, whilst analysing last season's statistics.

Alan Shearer, the all-time top Premier League scorer, has also scored the most penalties in the league. Of the 260 goals the Englishman scored in the Premier League, 54 of them were penalties, which he scored with both Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. Shearer has 11 more penalty goals than the second-highest penalty scorer, meaning the Englishman’s record isn’t likely to be broken in the near future.

Frank Lampard has 43 penalties to his name from his time at Chelsea and West Ham, the second-most in Premier League history. With these penalties, Lampard scored 117 goals, making him the competition's top-scoring midfielder, despite having left the Premier League over seven years ago.

Steven Gerrard, another renowned midfielder, scored 31 penalties, all for Liverpool, in the Premier League. The Englishman scored 121 goals in his 504 appearances in the league, joining Lampard as one of the few midfielders to score over 100 goals in the Premier League.

Gerrard also took some penalties for his country, famously missing in the 2006 World Cup Quarter-final penalty shootout against Portugal. However, he did also score in the shootout against Italy in the 2012 Euros.

Mark Noble retired this season, and after spending his entire career at West Ham, he left as The Hammers’ all-time top penalty scorer in the Premier League with 28 penalties. Noble’s usual trade was as a defensive midfielder, but was consistent from the spot, only missing four penalties in his career.

Harry Kane, is the only active player in the top five all-time penalty scorers, scoring 28 penalties in his Premier League career. Kane scored four penalties in 2021/22 alone, a pretty consistent number for the Englishman who has only scored more in two other seasons - 2016/17 and 2015/16. In relation to England, Kane is the top penalty scorer, with 15 in total from 18 taken, six more than second-place Frank Lampard.

In the 2021/22 season, Chelsea were the club that scored the most penalties in the Premier League with eight. They still managed to do this despite missing one, a Jorginho miss against West Ham in the latter stage of the season.

Liverpool and Manchester City were close seconds, both scoring seven, with Liverpool only missing one penalty, and City missing two.

Chelsea and City received the most penalties last season, with nine each. Whereas, Wolves received the least, only one throughout the entire season. Burnley, Watford and Leicester also only received two penalties - with only Leicester having a 100% conversion rate.

The team with the most penalty misses last season was Brighton, as The Seagulls missed three of their seven penalties received, giving them a 57.1% conversion rate for penalties. However, this is not the worst penalty conversion rate in the league, that belongs to Burnley and Watford who both have a 50% penalty conversion rate as they both received two penalties and missed one.

The highest penalty conversion rate in the Premier League was 100%, with Brentford, Leeds, Tottenham, Southampton, Norwich, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Leicester and Wolves scoring all of the penalties they received last season. Though this does vary in number, as Brentford, Leeds and Tottenham scored five, whereas Wolves only scored one.

The top penalty scorer last season was Jorginho, the Chelsea man scored six whilst Salah, Ivan Toney and Wilfried Zaha converted five. However, before he left in January, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had the most misses in the league with two for the season, against Watford and Aston Villa.

Anthony Taylor awarded the most penalties of any referee this season, as he gave 12 penalties in 32 games, which equates to 0.38 penalties per match. This was closely followed by Mike Dean who gave 11 penalties in 27 games and Martin Atkinson who awarded nine in 32 games.

The clearest candidate for players that could beat Alan Shearer’s current record of 54 penalties is Harry Kane. The Englishman is currently on 28 at only 28 years old and has consistently scored four or more penalties per season more recently, though only based on that record, Kane would have to continue to score four penalties a season for six more seasons.

The only active players who are even somewhat close to Kane’s record is Jamie Vardy on 26, Luka Milivojevic on 22 and Mohamed Salah on 18. However, like Kane, these players would have to score 28 or more to equal or beat Shearer’s record, meaning the likelihood of anyone beating the Englishman’s record is very low.