Table of Contents
Who are the best
Premier League penalty takers in the Premier
League? We look at which players could best handle the pressure
of taking a spot-kick, while also reflecting on those who weren’t
so successful.
Best
Premier League Penalty Takers
Yaya Touré: 100%
scored (11/11)
Raúl Jiménez: 100% scored (11/11)
Matthew Le Tissier: 96.2% scored (25/26)
Danny Murphy: 94.7% scored (18/19)
Callum Wilson: 94.1% scored (16/17)
James Beattie: 94.1% scored (16/17)
Julian Dicks: 93.8% scored (15/16)
Cole Palmer: 93.3% scored (14/15)
Bukayo Saka: 92.3% scored (12/13)
Thierry Henry: 92.0% scored (23/25)
Ivan Toney: 91.7% scored (11/12)
Aleksander Isak: 91.7% scored (11/12)
Bryan Mbeumo: 90.9% scored (10/11)
Leighton Baines: 90.9% scored (20/22)
Danny Ings: 90.9% scored (10/11)
Gary Speed: 90.9% scored (10/11)
Frank Leboeuf: 90.9% scored (10/11)
James Milner: 90.0% scored (18/20)
Peter Beardsley: 90.0% scored (18/20)
Alexis Mac Allister: 90.0% scored (9/10)
João Pedro: 90.0% scored (9/10)
Mikel Arteta: 89.5% scored (17/19)
Eden Hazard: 89.5% scored (17/19)
Harry Kane: 89.2% scored (33/37)
Only including players with
10+ penalties taken in the Premier League.
The Only
Two Players to Score 100% of Penalties in the Premier
League*
*Well, of players to have taken at least 10 penalties in the
competition, anyway.
The accolade for the most penalties taken with a 100% success
rate was held solely by former Manchester
City midfielder Yaya Touré, but he has since been joined on a
perfect 11. The Ivorian star might have lost his cool about not
being given a birthday cake for his 31st birthday, but he certainly
kept a fine temperament from the penalty spot.
He took 11 penalties in the Premier League and scored with every
single one of them. Seven of Touré’s 11 Premier League penalties
turned out to be the winning goal in the game, while five put his
Manchester City team into the lead.
Chelsea star
Cole Palmer went ahead of Touré on the list in December 2024. His
two successful penalties against Tottenham Hotspur meant he had
scored all 12 penalties he had taken in Premier League history.
However, Palmer saw a penalty saved against Leicester City in
March 2025 to ruin his 100% record, missing an unlucky 13th
attempt.
Fulham
forward Raúl Jiménez joined Touré with a 100% success rate from 11
penalties after he scored from the spot in December 2025 against
Nottingham Forest.
Bryan Mbeumo joined the 100% gang from 10+ attempts in April
2025 when he converted from the spot for Brentford
against Newcastle United. His flawless record from penalties in the
Premier League came to an end on 18 May 2025, however, as Fulham
goalkeeper Bernd Leno saved his spot-kick at the Gtech Community
Stadium.
His former teammate Ivan Toney had scored all 10 of the
penalties that he’d taken by the point of March 2023, and had the
chance to equal Touré’s record a month later. However, he finally
missed one with his 11th attempt in the competition during a home
defeat to Newcastle on 8 April 2023. He did go on to score a
penalty in the same game, later in the first half, but it was in
vain as they lost 2-1. And crucially, his 100% record was gone.
The players with the next most penalties and a 100% conversion
rate are Dimitar Berbatov (nine from nine) and
Rúben Neves and Chris Wood (both
eight from eight).
Matt Le
Tissier Did Miss a Penalty
No, this is not a conspiracy. He may have scored 25 penalties in
the Premier League, but Matt Le Tissier did miss a
spot-kick in the competition. The only man to save a Premier League
penalty taken by Le Tissier? That would be Nottingham
Forest’s Mark
Crossley in March 1993.
That penalty save mattered, too – Forest went on to pick up a
2-1 away win that day at The Dell, despite Le Tissier making amends
(of sorts) after his 22nd-minute penalty miss, when he scored
Southampton’s only goal of the game in the 72nd minute.
That was Le Tissier’s third penalty as a Premier League player,
after scoring the previous two he took in the competition. He would
never miss in the English top-flight again, with his next 23
successfully dispatched past the opposition goalkeeper.
The Guernsey-born forward went on to make Nottingham Forest pay
for his saved penalty against them, as he scored his next four
penalties against them in the Premier League, including three
against his nemesis Crossley – more than against any other club in
the competition.
The Best
of the Rest
Danny Murphy scored with 18 of his 19 penalties
taken in the Premier League (95%), with his only miss coming for
Fulham at Manchester City in April 2008 – Joe Hart the goalkeeper
to ruin his 100% record with his ninth attempt from the spot in the
competition.
Of current players in the Premier League to have taken at least
10 penalties, West Ham striker Callum Wilson
(94.1%) is right up there, having missed only one of his 17 in the
competition. That miss came against Cardiff City for Bournemouth in
August 2018, with Neil Etheridge the goalkeeper to destroy Wilson’s
100% record.
Bukayo Saka has missed just one of his 13
penalties in the Premier League (92.3%), while Alexander
Isak has scored 11 from 12 attempts in the competition
(91.7%).
Julian Dicks (15/16) and James
Beattie (16/17) both only missed once, boasting 93.8% and
94.1% conversion rates.
Dicks’ penalty technique favoured power, but that wasn’t enough
to give him a 100% record in the Premier League from the spot –
David Seaman saving his penalty for West Ham against Arsenal in
February 1996.
Thierry Henry never saw a Premier League
penalty saved, but he still missed two of his 25 taken in the
competition. Weirdly both of his penalty misses came via hitting
the post against two of the only three Finnish goalkeepers to play
in the Premier League (Jussi Jääskeläinen and Antti Niemi). Finish?
He could. Finnish? He could not.
Quirky
Penalty Record Facts
Unsurprisingly, Premier League record goalscorer Alan
Shearer is the player with the most penalty goals in the
competition (56), having also taken the most in the Premier League
(67).
Frank Lampard (43), MohamedSalah (35), Harry Kane (33),
Steven Gerrard (32), Mark Noble
(28), Sergio Agüero (27) and Jamie
Vardy (27) follow Shearer in the Premier League penalty
goal rankings.
Only three players have missed at least 10 penalties in the
Premier League: Alan Shearer (11), Wayne
Rooney (11) and Teddy Sheringham
(10).
On 30 November 2024 against Wolves, Bournemouth’s Justin
Kluivert became the first player in Premier League history
to score a hat-trick of penalties in a single match, with teammate
Evanilson also the first to win three penalties in
the same match in the competition.
Aleksandar Mitrovic missed four of the eight
penalties that he took for Fulham in the 2022-23 Premier League
season, becoming the first player to ever miss as many as four
penalties in a single EPL campaign.
Middlesbrough’s diminutive Brazilian Juninho
may have been one of the most popular players in the club’s
history, but he wasn’t any good at penalties. A shout for one of
the worst penalty-takers of all time in the competition, no player
in Premier League history has taken as many as he has (four)
without scoring one – Paul Merson (three) and
Mike Newell came close, though (three).
Worst
Premier League Penalty Takers
Juan Pablo Ángel:
50.0% scored (5/10)
Steed Malbranque: 60.0% scored (6/10)
Dwight Yorke: 60.0% scored (6/10)
Kevin Phillips: 61.1% scored (11/18)
Aleksandar Mitrovic: 61.5% scored (8/13)
Wilfried Zaha: 63.6% scored (7/11)
Paul Pogba: 63.6% scored (7/11)
Michael Owen: 66.7% scored (14/21)
Christian Benteke: 66.7% scored (10/15)
Wayne Rooney: 67.6% scored (23/34)
Teddy Sheringham: 67.7% scored (21/31)
Riyad Mahrez: 68.4% scored (13/19)
Jonathan Walters: 68.8% scored (11/16)
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: 69.2% scored
(9/13)
Jermain Defoe: 70.0% scored (14/20)
Romelu Lukaku: 70.0% scored (7/10)
Only including players with
10+ penalties taken in the Premier League.
Juan Pablo Ángel is the worst penalty taker in
Premier League history, of players to have taken at least 10 in the
competition. He only scored half (five) of his 10 penalties for
Aston Villa between October 2001 and October 2006.
The Colombian striker scored four of his first five, but then
missed four of his final five – two of those came in the same game
against Fulham in February 2005, seeing both
penalties saved by Edwin van der Sar across the space of just five
minutes and 44 seconds. Ángel had already put his side into a
55th-minute lead at Craven Cottage, but was made to pay for his two
misses, as Lee Clark scored an equaliser in injury time for the
Whites.
Steed Malbranque and Dwight
Yorke both missed four of the 10 penalties that they took
in the Premier League, while Kevin Phillips only
scored 61% of his penalties in the competition (11/18). Man Utd
fans saw Paul Pogba miss four of the 11 penalties
he took for the club in the Premier League.
Of 30 players to have taken at least 20 penalties in the Premier
League, Michael Owen has the worst success rate
from the penalty spot, scoring just 14 of his 21 spot-kicks in the
top flight (66.7%).
Former Premier League trio Aleksandar Mitrović
(8/13 – 61.5%), Wilfried Zaha (7/11 – 63.6%) and
Riyad Mahrez (13/19 – 68.4%) all make the top 12
for worst Premier League penalty takers in the history of the
competition.
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