Harry Kane, Tottenham Hotspurs's forward, is, currently, the fifth player with the most goals scored in the Premier League with 181 goals to be exact. Above him, we have Sergio Agüero(184 goals), Andrew Cole(187 goals), Wayne Rooney(208 goals), and the great Alan Shearer as the All-timer scorer of the EPL with 260 goals.
Shearer, in his 14 years in the EPL, averaged almost 19 goals per season. Kane is currently in his 10th season and has averaged almost 13 goals a season. It would be really difficult for him to surpass Shearer. Although, during Wayne Rooney's 18 years in the Premier League he also averaged exactly 13 goals per season. In this scenario, if Kane is willing to climb up the charts, he can try to become the second All-time scorer and surpass Wayne Rooney.
Kane's best scoring season is the 2017-18 season where he scored 30 goals and finished in second place in Top Scorer of the season only behind Mohamed Salah by two goals. However, in the current season(2021-22) he has only scored 15 goals in 35 games. This is the second-lowest number of goals scored in a season for him since 2013-14 when he scored 3 goals.
In addition to that, it can be rough for him to score when one of his teammates is also one of the Top Scores in the last season. The Korean, Heung-Min son is also a brilliant scorer and only gets better season by season. In the 2021-22 season, Son has scored 21 goals in fewer appearances than Kane. Could this be affecting Kane's road to All-time scorer or is it just his efficiency downgrading? Well, Son had a better shooting success and accuracy compared to Kane, but the number 10 of Tottenham attempted almost 36% more shots than Son.
Nevertheless, what we should really compare is the performance of Kane and Rooney. Even though Rooney has had many more shot attempts than Kane, the Spurs' forward has a better shooting accuracy than him. Rooney is 49.9% on accuracy while Kane is 57.7%. Their goals per match can also be interesting factors. Kane has 0.65 goals per match while having an 0.55xG(Expected Goals per match) while Rooney had 0.42 goals per match and 0.32xG.
If we analyze Kane's entire EPL career it is possible to say that if we calculate his average goals per match and divide by the difference between Rooney's goals, he would need to score 27 goals in, at least, 42 games to surpass Wayne Rooney and become the second All-time scorer of the EPL. In spite of that, if we only calculate based only on his performance during the last season, he will only be able to surpass Rooney in, at least, 63 games.
All in all, yes, it is possible for Harry Kane to surpass Wayne Rooney in the All-time scoring list table, he is still 28 years old and both Shearer and Rooney retired when they were around 35 years old. Yet, in order for him to achieve it, he will definitely need to improve his game and have a better season than the last one. Wasting fewer shots off target and improving his shooting success could be a great way for him to accelerate the process and move up on the list.
About the author
Ana Beatriz Macedo is a Data Science and AI undergraduate student in PUC-SP in Brazil. Plans on pursuing and developing a career in Sports Analytics and Data Science. Favorite leagues are the NBA, NFL and EPL. Here is a link to her LinkedIn profile.
Sources used to make the charts and statistics:
- https://footystats.org/england/premier-league
- https://www.premierleague.com/
- https://understat.com/
- https://fbref.com/en/comps/9/Premier-League-Stats
- https://statsbomb.com/
