Logically, scoring a goal helps your team win. But who are those players that have taken that to the extreme and have never lost a Premier League game while netting? Behold, these are the league’s lucky charms.
First, a quick cautionary tale. We’ll get onto the Premier League’s lucky charms in a few moments. But pour one out for the top-flight’s most unlucky player: Huddersfield Town and Brentford’s Zanka, who has ended up on the losing side in all four of the games he’s scored in to date. Or Matt Le Tisser, who scored in 79 games across his Premier League career, but still lost a staggering 32% of those matches.
Scoring and winning isn’t for everyone.
But here’s the list of the players that have scored in the most individual games without losing a single one of them.
Gabriel Jesus
55 Games Scored In – W50 D5
Aside from his four Premier League winners’ medals, Gabriel Jesus is the owner of another enviable league record. His 68 Premier League goals have come in 55 different matches, but the real kicker? In every single one of those 55 games he’s scored in, his side have never lost.
Of course, it helps that Jesus has exclusively played in exceptionally dominant sides. That’s why he’s managed to speed up this list so quickly, despite playing just 188 matches.
159 of those came at the Etihad for Man City who Jesus joined in the summer of 2016-17 – the same window that saw Pep Guardiola arrive.
Now he’s in north London having moved to Arsenal in the summer of 2022-23 and, together with fellow City team-mate Oleksandr Zinchenko, the pair have transformed Mikel Arteta’s side, catapulting them from top-four hopefuls to potential title contenders.
At present, Jesus has a 90.9% win rate in games that he’s scored in. Only two players to have scored in 20+ games without losing can better that feat (Pedro 96.3% and Antonio Valencia 95.7%)
James Milner
54 Games Scored In – W43 D11
James Milner always appears in these lists, doesn’t he? When he’s not appearing in the list for the youngest Premier League scorers of all-time, or those who’ve made the most appearances, he appears in ones like this.
Milner has scored in 54 games across his Premier League career in spells at Leeds United, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Liverpool. Only Jesus has scored in more games without losing a single one of them. Mr. Reliable does it once again.
Darius Vassell
46 Games Scored In – W36 D10
Darius Vassell scored 52 Premier League goals across 265 appearances for Aston Villa and Manchester City. Those goals came in 46 games and Vassell remained unbeaten in every single one.
Vassell did find himself on the losing side after scoring for Leicester City in their 3-2 loss to Nottingham Forest in April 2011 but thankfully for him this came in the Championship and not the top flight. His place of this list is safe.
Of course, you don’t have to lose a game for footballing heartbreak to find you as Vassell knows all too well. After England’s 2-2 draw against Portugal in the quarter-finals of Euro 2004, Vassell missed England’s last spot-kick in the penalty shootout, allowing Portugal’s goalkeeper Ricardo to score the winner.
Rather than that painful memory, perhaps we ought to remember Vassell more fondly for being Aston Villa and Man City’s lucky charm over a large chunk of the noughties.
Diogo Jota
36 Games Scored In – W30 D6
2022-23 hasn’t been the luckiest season for Diogo Jota. The forward missed Liverpool’s start to the season with a hamstring injury he aggravated in pre-season, and then picked up a serious calf injury against Manchester City in October 2022 that ruled him out of the World Cup.
But his injury issues now appear to be behind him and Jota has scored six goals in his last four matches, including braces against Leeds and Nottingham Forest. The Portuguese has scored in 24 different games for Jurgen Klopp’s side and hasn’t been on the losing side once. His time on Merseyside got off to a flying start, with Jota not only becoming the first player since Robbie Fowler to score as many as seven goals in his first 10 appearances, but the first Liverpool player to score in each of his first four Premier League home games.
Jota also scored in 12 different matches for Wolves during his time at Molineux Stadium and wasn’t on the losing side with them either. That’s perhaps a slightly more impressive feat given Jota’s first season in the top flight came as Wolves had just been promoted.
Salomon Kalou
32 Games Scored In – W29 D3
Salomon Kalou is another striker blessed to have played in a dominant team during his Premier League days. Although he won just one Premier League title with Chelsea over his six-year career in west London, he was still part of the team that won both the FA Cup and League Cup in 2006-07 as well as finishing second in the Premier League, and part of the side that finished second, third, first and second in the four subsequent seasons.
Kalou – who had been brought to the club by José Mourinho after impressing with Feyenoord in the Eredivisie – only hit double figures for league goals in one season (2010-11), but whenever he scored Chelsea were safe. He notched in 32 games for the Blues, winning 29 of those and drawing three.
That’s the top five, but how about a look at the other players to have scored in 20+ Premier League games and not taste defeat. As mentioned, Pedro (96.3% win rate) only failed to win one of the games he scored in across his English top-flight career (a 1-1 draw against Burnley in February 2017 for those wondering). Given his youth and the team he plays for, Arsenal’s Gabriel Martinelli could quickly climb up the list, while it’s good to see Everton’s reliable skipper Seamus Coleman make an appearance.
Oyvind Leonhardsen: 28 Games Scored In (W21 D7)
Pedro: 27 Games Scored In (W26 D1)
Gabriel Martinelli: 24 Games Scored In (W20 D4)
Antonio Valencia: 23 Games Scored In (W22 D1)
Georginio Wijnaldum: 23 Games Scored In (W19 D4)
Marcos Alonso: 23 Games Scored In (W17 D6)
Seamus Coleman: 22 Games Scored In (W17 D5)
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