What's the Average Goal-Scoring Rate for Premier League Strikers?

**TL;DR: **The average Premier League starting striker scores roughly once every two to three matches across a full season, while elite finishers like the league's Golden Boot contenders push that closer to once every 1.5 matches. Squad strikers and fringe players are usually closer to one in four or worse.

Goal-scoring rate is one of those stats that gets thrown around without much context. A striker who is averaging a goal every two games sounds great until you realise that translates to roughly 19 league goals across 38 matches, which is what most clubs expect from their first-choice number nine. Here is how to think about it properly.

The headline number

Across recent Premier League seasons, an established starting striker tends to score around 0.4 to 0.5 goals per match. Some context: the top scorer in a typical season finishes with 20 to 30 league goals, while the 20th-best scorer in the division is usually on 8 to 10.

• Elite striker (Golden Boot contender): around 0.6 to 0.8 goals per match
• First-choice striker at a top-six club: around 0.4 to 0.6 goals per match
• First-choice striker at a mid-table club: around 0.3 to 0.4 goals per match
• Squad striker or rotation player: around 0.15 to 0.25 goals per match
• Wide forward (winger filling in): around 0.2 to 0.4 goals per match

If you want a feel for how these numbers feed into team-level scoring, our piece on average goals per game in the Premier League is a good companion read. The whole league average sits a bit under three goals per match, and a big chunk of that comes from the named strikers above.

Why the rate varies so much

Strikers do not score in a vacuum. A poacher at a possession-heavy team gets more chances per 90 minutes than the same player would at a counter-attacking side. Service quality, formation, and the manager's instructions all bend the goal rate up or down.

There is also a noise floor. A striker on a hot streak might score five in three, then go four games without one. That is normal variance, not a sign of decline. We unpack the way streaks work in our piece on the psychology of prediction streaks, and the same logic applies to scoring runs.