For those who are a fan of having a flutter on football, you will know that there are some outcomes that don’t happen too often.
One of those outcomes is a single player scoring four goals in a match. Indeed, the odds on such an outcome reflect the reality that it doesn’t happen too regularly. Yes, a hat-trick may be a regular enough occurrence, but four is less likely, and the numbers offered up by betting sites reflect just that.
And yet players do sometimes score four goals, even in the highly competitive surroundings of the Premier League. Chelsea’s Cole Palmer became the latest player to achieve such a feat when nabbing four goals against Brighton at Stamford Bridge.
Even more incredibly, the 22-year-old did it in just 45 minutes of football, with all of those goals coming in the first half against the Seagulls. To celebrate the achievement of the Blues’ latest superstar, we decided to have a little look through the record books to see who has scored four or more goals in a game throughout Premier League history.
The boy is a genius. 💫#CFC | #CHEBHA pic.twitter.com/pIuZIiKKll
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) September 28, 2024
Some players have scored five!
There are five players in the history of the Premier League that have scored five goals in a single match. Manchester United’s Andy Cole was the first player to do so back in 1995 against a hapless Ipswich Town in an incredible 9-0 win.
The second was Premier League legend Alan Shearer – the competition’s highest-ever scorer – when he hit five against Sheffield Wednesday in 1999. Tottenham’s Jermain Defoe was the next to go five star, incredibly doing so all in the second half in his team’s 9-1 win over Wigan.
Manchester United’s Dimitar Berbatov hit the mark in the 2010/11 season,
bagging the five against Blackburn in a season that United went on to win the league. The
fifth player on this list was Sergio Aguero for Manchester City in a 6-1 win over
Newcastle in 2015.
Iconic Performances: Aguero mauls Magpies with five-star showing
Multiple four-goal-plus scorers
Aguero stands alone as the only player to have scored four or more goals on three
occasions (he also scored four against Tottenham and Leicester).
However, there are a few players who have achieved the feat twice. Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler was the first, with Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer next. The second of Solskjaer’s four-goal hauls came after being introduced as a 72nd minute substitute in a famous game with Nottingham Forest in 1999.
Iconic Performances: ‘Super sub’ Solskjaer hits four at Forest
Michael Owen and Frank Lampard were the next two players to hit four twice, with Lampard becoming the first Chelsea player to do so. The only players to four goals in a game for different clubs are Yakubu, first hitting four for Portsmouth in 2004 before doing it again for Blackburn in 2011, and Berbatov, who along with his five for United, scored four for Spurs.
The latest player to have hit four twice? None other than Palmer. He also scored four times during a 6-0 win over Everton in April 2024.
Other notable names, and some surprise
All in all there have been 30 different players to have scored four or more goals in a single
match in Premier League history. We have already mentioned some stellar names, and they
are joined by the likes of Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Romelu Lukaku, Son Heung-min, Mohamed Salah, Luis Suarez, Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry, Jurgen Klinsmann and Mark Viduka.
But there are a few surprise names of this list too. The first player to achieve the
accomplishment in the Premier League era was Efan Ekoku for Wimbledon way back in
1993 in a 5-1 win at Everton. Georginio Wijnaldum, primarily a midfielder, did it for Newcastle in a 6-2 win over Norwich in 2015. And West Ham’s Michail Antonio scored all the goals in his side’s 4-0 win over Norwich in 2020.
Palmer matches Chelsea legends
There have been six occasions when a Chelsea player has scored four goals in a single
match. Two of those players, Palmer and Lampard, did it twice. The other two? Gianluca
Vialli was the first in a 6-0 away win over Barnsley in August 2017. The second player was
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in a 6-1 win over Coventry in October 2000.
A midfielder scoring FOUR goals TWICE in the Premier League? It’s a @ChelseaFC thing 😉 pic.twitter.com/svB70VsVXf
— Premier League India (@PLforIndia) September 30, 2024
But there’s only one Cole Palmer…
Despite these impressive numbers and the incredible players featured on this round-up, no
one has matched the achievement of the young Englishman in bagging his four goals in the
first half of a match. And the way things are going for this latest superstar of the Bridge, it
won’t be the only record he sets along the way.
