In what is already a record-breaking season for goals, February 2024 broke another Premier League goal record.
West Ham’s six-goal affair with Brentford saw the Premier League end February 2024 on a high note. Those goals in the hosts’ 4-2 win at London Stadium took the competition’s goal tally to 158 in 42 matches for the month.
When looking at the goals-per-game average across every month of action in Premier League history, we’ve never seen a higher rate than February’s 3.8 goals.
The last month has been a continuation of the high goal return across the Premier League in 2023-24, with the overall seasonal goals-per-game average at 3.25 – the highest that it’s ever been in a single season of the Premier League. The rate is also well above the previous record of 2.85 from last season.
In fact, you have to go back to 1964-65 (3.34) to find an English top-flight season with a higher goals-per-game average than this campaign so far.
February wasn’t the highest-scoring month overall in Premier League history, though – that accolade belongs to December 2018, when there were 209 goals across 69 matches.
It was Arsenal who led the way among the 20 Premier League teams in the past month, with Mikel Arteta’s side scoring 18 times across four matches – their highest return in a single month of Premier League competition, breaking their previous record by three goals (December 2021 and December 2012 – 15 goals).
It’s Liverpool who are the league’s top scorers this season (63 goals), but they will have to up their goal average quite dramatically if they are to trouble Manchester City’s all-time Premier League record of 106 goals in a single season (2017-18). The Reds’ current rate of 2.42 goals per game has them on course to hit 94 goals come the end of May.
At the other end of the table, Sheffield United could be set to break the all-time Premier League record for goals conceded in a single season. Swindon Town currently hold that accolade with 100 conceded in 1993-94 (a 42-game season). Even with four games fewer to hit the century, Sheffield United’s current average of 2.54 goals conceded per game has them on track to let in 96 by the end of this season. It could be close.
With games lasting longer than ever thanks to the new added-time protocols, we’ve already seen 78 goals scored in second-half added time this season, with 122 matches left to play. That’s only seven away from the all-time Premier League seasonal record of 85 set in both 2018-19 and 2021-22.
With three action-packed months of the 2023-24 Premier League season remaining, and goals being scored as freely as they are, there seems little doubt that the competition will break the 1,000-goal barrier for an eighth successive season.
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