10 Premier League Records That May Never Be Broken After Haaland's 100-Goal Feat |

With his 100th Premier League goal coming in just his 105th appearance, the Norwegian has rewritten what seemed possible in English football’s top division.

Haaland demolished Alan Shearer’s previous record by 15 games, a margin so huge it almost defies belief. When Shearer set his mark of reaching 100 goals in 124 appearances back in the 1990s, it felt untouchable. The former Newcastle and Blackburn striker was a phenomenon, a goalscoring machine built for the rough-and-tumble Premier League of that era.

Yet Haaland has made it look routine, averaging nearly a goal per game since his summer 2022 arrival from Borussia Dortmund.

His debut season alone produced 36 league goals, obliterating the previous record of 34 shared by Andy Cole and Shearer himself. That tally might fall again this campaign if Haaland maintains his current pace.

While his century-reaching speed has set a new benchmark that seems destined to stand for decades, he’s far from alone in holding records that appear virtually unbreakable.

The Premier League has been home to some truly extraordinary achievements across its 32-year history. Some records tower above the rest not just for their statistical excellence but for the sheer improbability that modern football could ever replicate them.

Here are 10 marks that should survive long after Haaland has hung up his boots.

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10. Arsenal’s Unbeaten 2003/04 Season

10. Arsenal’s Unbeaten 2003/04 Season

10 Premier League Records That May Never Be Broken After Haaland's 100-Goal Feat

There is something poetic about Arsenal sitting atop the Premier League table right now as we discuss their most untouchable achievement. The Invincibles remain the gold standard for sustained excellence across a full campaign, going 38 games without a single defeat on their way to the 2003/04 title.

Twenty-six wins and 12 draws saw Arsene Wenger’s side finish on 90 points. Not a record-breaking total by modern standards, but the perfection of their campaign transcends mere point accumulation. Preston North End managed it way back in 1888/89 during the inaugural Football League season, but in the 38-game format that has defined the modern era, Arsenal stand completely alone.

The near-misses only amplify how difficult this achievement really is.

Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea lost just once in 2004/05, accumulating 95 points but falling short of perfection. Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool machine of 2018/19 racked up 97 points with only a single defeat, yet still finished second to Manchester City.

If those two legendary managers, along with Pep Guardiola and Sir Alex Ferguson in their absolute prime years, couldn’t match Wenger’s feat, what hope does anyone else have?

The demands of modern football make this even more unlikely now.

Fixture congestion, the depth of competition in the league, and the physical toll on players all work against sustained perfection across nine months. Arsenal’s achievement sits in its own category, untouchable.

9. Derby County’s Record-Low 11 Points

At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Derby County’s catastrophic 2007/08 campaign, a cautionary tale so severe that it has somehow avoided being repeated despite several teams giving it a good try.

The Rams managed just one solitary victory across the entire season, another Premier League low in itself, limping to a final tally of 11 points. Every metric from that season tells the same story of complete collapse.

They scored only 20 goals while conceding 89, finishing 23 points adrift of safety. It remains the worst top-flight season in English football history.

Southampton came terrifyingly close to matching this misery last season, eventually escaping on 12 points. Wolves currently look in serious danger this campaign, with relegation appearing increasingly inevitable.

Teams in real trouble now tend to panic-buy in January, sack their manager multiple times, or somehow cobble together enough desperate points through sheer survival instinct to avoid becoming the new standard for awfulness.

Derby’s 2007/08 season required a perfect storm of incompetence, bad luck, and poor squad planning. Replicating that level of failure in the modern era, with all its financial resources and mid-season intervention opportunities, feels almost impossible.

The record stands as a warning that thankfully remains unmatched.

8. Manchester City’s 100-Point Season

The 2017/18 campaign represents Manchester City at its absolute top.

Many supporters still argue it remains the finest single season in Premier League history, and the numbers back them up. Guardiola’s side became the first team to reach 100 points in a 38-game season, combining relentless consistency with breathtaking attacking football.

The drama of how they won the record only adds to its mystique. Gabriel Jesus scored a 94th-minute winner at Southampton on the final day to push City over the triple-digit mark, sending Guardiola into his now-famous touchline celebration. That goal represented the culmination of a season where City seemed to exist on a different plane from the rest of English football.

Liverpool came agonizingly close to breaking it during their 2019/20 title-winning campaign, eventually finishing on 99 points after understandably easing off once the trophy was secured.

That remains the closest anyone has come. For a team to surpass 100 points requires not just extraordinary quality but sustained motivation even after the title is mathematically secure.

The competitive balance in the Premier League remains tight rather than loosening.

Mid-table clubs now possess the financial resources and coaching expertise to trouble even the elite on any given day. Reaching 100 points demands near-perfection across nine months, and that feels like a higher bar than ever before.

7. Manchester City and Liverpool’s 18-Game Winning Streaks

Winning 18 consecutive Premier League matches sounds absurd when you say it out loud. Two teams have managed this remarkable feat, and both achieved it during their dominant title-winning campaigns.

City set the mark first during that magical 2017/18 season, reeling off victory after victory as they powered toward the championship.

The streak embodied everything great about Guardiola’s football philosophy: possession-based dominance backed by clinical finishing.

For a spell, they looked capable of going the entire season unbeaten, which would have equalled Arsenal’s Invincibles before they eventually lost to Liverpool in January 2018.

Liverpool matched the achievement during their long-awaited 2019/20 title triumph, their first in 30 years. Klopp’s side put together their own run of 18 straight wins as they powered to the championship, combining their trademark intensity with newfound consistency. Like City before them, they too flirted with an unbeaten season before eventually falling short.

The fact that only these two super-teams managed this feat during what many consider the two greatest Premier League title-winning campaigns ever suggests how difficult it really is.

Winning 18 in a row requires not just quality but incredible fortune with injuries, refereeing decisions, and those random moments of chaos that define football. One bad bounce, one controversial call, one off day can derail the whole thing.

6. Manchester United’s 14-Game Clean Sheet Run

During the 2008/09 season, Manchester United put together a defensive run so dominant that it still seems faintly ridiculous. Between November 15, 2008, and February 21, 2009, Edwin van der Sar, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, and company kept 14 consecutive clean sheets in the league.

To put that in perspective, Chelsea’s 10 straight shutouts during their 2004/05 title-winning season felt like an impossible record at the time. United smashed through that barrier and then kept going for four more games. Blackburn’s Roque Santa Cruz finally broke through in late February, ending a run that had seen United’s defence become essentially impenetrable.

5. Chelsea’s 15 Goals Conceded

If you think 14 straight clean sheets sounds impressive, consider that Chelsea conceded only 15 goals across the entire 2004/05 campaign. Read that number again. Fifteen goals in 38 games. It almost defies belief.

Jose Mourinho arrived at Stamford Bridge and immediately built a fortress. John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, and Petr Cech formed the backbone of a defense that simply refused to be broken down. The Blues romped to the title in Mourinho’s debut season, and their success rested entirely on that rock-solid defensive foundation.

To average conceding less than half a goal per game across an entire season represents a level of consistency that borders on the absurd.

Arsenal came closest to threatening it recently, having let in just three goals through their opening 10 games this season. But they’ve since conceded four in the next three matches, and even their own club record of 17 from 1998/99 looks more achievable than Chelsea’s mark.

The modern game makes this record even more untouchable.

Teams press higher, play more expansively, and accept defensive risk as the price of attacking ambition. The kind of defensive conservatism that Mourinho employed so brilliantly in 2004/05 would be almost impossible to implement now without being accused of playing boring football. Chelsea’s 15 goals conceded stand as a monument to a different tactical era.

4. Manchester City’s 106 Goals Scored

The first of three extraordinary records from City’s 2017/18 season appears on this list, and their 106 goals scored might be the most impressive of all. Yes, Aston Villa scored 128 goals in the 1930/31 season, but we’re focusing on the Premier League era here.

City’s attacking play that season reached levels of excellence rarely seen in English football. Sergio Aguero bagged 21 league goals. Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane terrorised defences from the wings. Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva pulled strings in midfield, creating chance after chance.

The entire system hummed with attacking intent.

What makes this record feel so secure is that even Haaland’s goal-laden City sides have not come close. The Norwegian scored 36 times in his debut season, City finished with 94 goals total that year. Last season they managed 96. The 106 mark represents not just one superstar goalscorer but an entire team operating at maximum attacking capacity for nine months straight.

Tactical evolution has actually made this harder to achieve. Teams now defend in more sophisticated ways, compressing space and forcing mistakes rather than simply sitting deep.

The gap between the elite and the rest has narrowed. Scoring 106 goals requires not just quality but repeated thrashings of mid-table and lower sides, something that happens less frequently now than it did even five years ago.

3. John Burridge’s Age Record

At 43 years and 162 days old, John Burridge became the oldest player in Premier League history when he featured for Manchester City against QPR on the final day of the 1994/95 season. Remarkably, it was also his debut for the club, making the achievement even more unusual.

The true record belongs to Stanley Matthews, who played his final league game in February 1965 at 50 years and five days old. But in the Premier League era, Burridge’s mark has stood for three decades and shows no signs of falling.

Modern sports science has extended careers at the top level, but the demands of Premier League football remain brutally physical. Even goalkeepers, who have the longest shelf life of any position, rarely continue into their mid-40s at the elite level.

The financial realities of squad building also work against older players, as clubs prefer to invest in younger talents with resale value and longer-term potential.

For someone to break Burridge’s record, they would need to maintain elite-level fitness into their mid-40s while also convincing a Premier League club to keep them registered and actually play them. The combination of those factors makes this one of the safest records on this list.

2. Shane Long’s 7.69-Second Goal

The Irish striker with the ironic surname holds the record for the fastest goal in Premier League history, scoring for Southampton against Watford after just 7.69 seconds in April 2019.

The goal came almost directly from kickoff, with Long capitalising on a defensive mistake to score before most fans had settled into their seats.

Technically, this record could be broken at any moment. A team could implement a strategy of shooting from kickoff, hoping for a lucky deflection or goalkeeper error.

The chaos required for such a goal makes it incredibly unlikely. Everything needs to align perfectly: the kickoff, the defensive mistake, the attacker’s positioning, the finish. Long’s goal represented a perfect storm of circumstances that felt almost unrepeatable.

The psychological aspect also matters. Scoring in the opening seconds of a game is not something teams typically practice or plan for. It happens through opportunism and fortune rather than design.

While someone could theoretically score in 5 or 6 seconds, the likelihood of all the required factors aligning at just the right moment feels vanishingly small.

1. Alan Shearer’s 260 Goals

Here we arrive at the big one, the record that has defined Premier League greatness since the competition began. Alan Shearer scored 260 goals between 1992 and 2006, a total that has stood as the benchmark for over 18 years.

Haaland now sits 160 goals behind Shearer’s mark. Given his current rate of scoring, he could conceivably reach it, but the number of variables in play makes it far from certain. Can he avoid serious injuries across the next five to ten seasons?

Will he remain at City that long, or will Real Madrid or another European giant eventually lure him away? What happens when Guardiola eventually leaves Manchester? How might City’s potential punishment for their 115 charges affect squad building and competitiveness?

Even if everything breaks right for Haaland, he would need to maintain close to his current scoring rate for multiple seasons while avoiding the inevitable dips in form, tactical adjustments from opponents, and physical wear that affect every player eventually.

Shearer’s longevity at the highest level across 14 Premier League seasons represents not just peak performance but sustained excellence across an entire career.

The true English top-flight record belongs to Jimmy Greaves, who scored 357 league goals across his career. Neither Shearer nor Haaland will touch that mark, making Greaves the ultimate goalscoring king in English football history.

Haaland’s achievement in reaching 100 goals so quickly has given us a new untouchable record to marvel at. As these 10 marks demonstrate, the Premier League has been home to extraordinary feats that capture different aspects of footballing excellence.

Some represent perfection, others disaster. Some showcase individual brilliance, others team dominance. Together, they form the statistical tapestry of English football’s most competitive era, and they should remain intact for generations to come.