When Haaland closes on Salah in Premier League decade race

Halfway through the 2020s, Erling Haaland is edging ever closer to Mohamed Salah’s Premier League goal tally, sparking debate over who will finish the decade as the competition’s top‑men marksman. The race pits the Norwegian striker’s relentless scoring against a host of seasoned Premier League veterans whose numbers already dominate the top‑ten list.

Haaland’s surge has been relentless; each week he adds another tally, narrowing the gap that Salah set during his own prolific spell. The decade so far has been defined by Manchester City’s supremacy, yet Liverpool and Arsenal have also supplied players who feature among the leading scorers. All three clubs currently have representatives inside the Premier League’s top‑ten goal‑scorers of the 2020s.

Manchester City’s Phil Foden scored his first Premier League goal in 2019, the only one outside the current decade. Since then the attacking midfielder has surpassed the hundred‑goal mark in all competitions for City and recorded double‑figure league tallies in both the 2022‑23 and 2023‑24 seasons, earning the Premier League Player of the Season award for the latter campaign.

Arsenal’s rising star and seasoned forwards

Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, who extended his contract in February until the 2030s, is already on course to challenge a century of top‑flight goals. He will be 29 by the decade’s end and already boasts more than 60 Premier League strikes, having hit double figures in each of the 2021‑22, 2022‑23 and 2023‑24 campaigns. Saka also contributed seven goals to Arsenal’s 2025‑26 title triumph.

Midfielder Tai Wood entered the 2020s midway through a four‑and‑a‑half‑year spell at Burnley, netting seven goals in the latter half of the 2019‑20 season. After adding 15 more for Burnley, he moved to Newcastle in January 2022 but managed only four league goals before reviving his form at Nottingham Forest, where he has already scored 38 Premier League goals. Wood was one of just five players to reach the 20‑goal mark in the 2024‑25 campaign.

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West Ham’s forward Jarrod Bowen arrived from Hull City in January 2020 and scored his first Premier League goal in his third appearance, the sole strike of that season. Since then he has amassed more than 60 league goals, including the winner of the 2022‑23 Europa Conference League final and a decisive strike on the final day of the 2025‑26 season, moments likely to be remembered despite the Hammers’ subsequent relegation. Bowen has pledged his future to West Ham in the Championship.

United, Spurs and the South Korean icon

Manchester United’s midfielder Bruno Fernandes, who arrived from Sporting CP in January 2020, has remained a constant scoring force. He has recorded 74 Premier League goals to date, 27 of them from the penalty spot, and his lowest seasonal return has been eight goals while his best tally stands at 18 in his first full league campaign.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane, who left for Bayern Munich in 2023, finished the 2020s with 77 Premier League goals, including a 30‑goal haul in 2022‑23 that matched his 2017‑18 best. Although he never claimed the Golden Boot in those seasons, he did win it in 2020‑21 with 23 goals. By staying two extra seasons, his strike partner Son Heung‑min ended the decade with three more 2020s goals than Kane, sharing the 2021‑22 Golden Boot with Salah on 23 strikes and departing Tottenham in 2025 with 127 league goals, roughly 63 percent of which came in the current decade.

Outside the top‑ten, Alexander Isak, Callum Wilson and Bryan Mbeumo hover just beyond the cut‑off, while Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins made an instant impact despite never having played in the Premier League before summer 2020. After a 25‑goal Championship season with Brentford, Watkins recorded double‑figure tallies in six successive Premier League campaigns and topped the assists chart in 2023‑24 with 13, his best goal return that season being 19.

The juxtaposition of Haaland’s relentless pursuit of Salah’s record against the varied pathways of other scorers underlines how the Premier League’s goal‑scoring landscape remains both a personal race and a collective narrative, with the next half of the decade set to decide who will ultimately claim the top spot.