Highest scoring midfielders in Premier League history: All-time rankings

Midfielders aren’t supposed to top scoring charts. They’re meant to connect play, control tempo, and do the unseen work between both boxes.

Yet across the Premier League era, a select group have consistently bent that rule. They have turned intelligence, timing, and technique into goals on a remarkable scale.

These players didn’t just support attacks. They defined them, arriving late, striking from distance, and redefining what midfield influence looks like. This is the all-time ranking of the Premier League’s highest-scoring midfielders.

5 – Matt Le Tissier – 100 goals (Southampton)

There was nothing typical about Matt Le Tissier and that includes how he scored his goals.

“Le God” reached the 100-goal mark while operating in a side that rarely dominated possession or territory. He would score chips from impossible angles, thunderous volleys, solo dribbles through packed defences. Le Tissier made the spectacular feel routine.

He didn’t arrive late into the box like others on this list. Le Tiss simply created moments that shouldn’t have existed.

4 – Paul Scholes – 107 goals (Manchester United)

Paul Scholes’ goal tally is the by-product of timing, intelligence, and devastating technique.

Scholes mastered the art of arriving at precisely the right moment, similar to Lampard. His strikes from the edge of the box, clean, low, and unerring, became a hallmark of Manchester United’s most dominant era.

He never chased numbers. The goals arrived naturally, season after season, because defenders simply couldn’t afford to ignore him.

3 – Ryan Giggs – 109 goals (Manchester United)

Longevity tells its own story.

Ryan Giggs began his Premier League journey as a flying winger. He would terrorize full-backs with pace and directness and over time, his game evolved. As his role shifted deeper and more central, the goals kept coming, just differently.

Giggs accumulated 109 goals in over 650 appearances. This remains a reflection not just of quality, but of adaptability. Few players adapted the way Giggs did across decades.

2 – Steven Gerrard – 121 goals (Liverpool)

If there was a goal Liverpool needed, Steven Gerrard usually found it.

Gerrard’s 121 Premier League goals were forged in moments that demanded leadership and nerve. He operated as Liverpool’s heartbeat for nearly two decades, carrying responsibility few midfielders ever experience.

In fact, Liverpool’s legendary number eight could have scored more if he played as an attacking midfielder. However, he sacrificed his quality to fill his team’s needs, playing most of his career as a deeper midfielder.

1 – Frank Lampard – 177 goals (West Ham, Chelsea, Manchester City)

At the summit stands Frank Lampard, and the gap tells you everything. He got to this monster tally playing across three Premier League clubs, West Ham, Chelsea and Manchester City.

With 177 Premier League goals, Lampard isn’t just the highest-scoring midfielder in the league’s history, he’s in a category of his own. No other midfielder has even crossed 150.

His late runs into the box became a science and his finishing was striker-level while his consistency turned him into something football had never really seen before: a goalscoring machine in a midfielder’s clothing.