Most Goals in a Premier League Game

The record for the most goals by one player in a single Premier League game is five, shared by five players. Andy Cole was the first to do it, scoring all five in Manchester United’s 9-0 thrashing of Ipswich Town in March 1995.

Scoring a hat-trick is rare enough; scoring five in a single top-flight match is one of the hardest individual feats in the sport. In more than three decades of the Premier League, only five players have managed it, and none has ever reached six. Here is the full leaderboard of the biggest one-game hauls, and the matches that produced them. All figures are as of the 2025 season.

The record: five goals, shared five ways

Andy Cole set the mark in 1995, and it took years for anyone to match him. Alan Shearer joined the club in 1999, Jermain Defoe in 2009, Dimitar Berbatov in 2010 and Sergio Aguero in 2015. Each needed a lopsided scoreline, a clinical afternoon and a touch of fortune to reach five.

What unites them is that the record has only ever been equaled, never broken. The Premier League’s defensive quality and squad rotation make a five-goal game exceptionally rare, and a six-goal game has never happened.

The full leaderboard of the biggest one-game hauls

The table below lists every player to score five goals in a Premier League match.

Goals	Player	Match	Date
5	Andy Cole	Man United 9-0 Ipswich Town	March 1995
5	Alan Shearer	Newcastle 8-0 Sheffield Wednesday	September 1999
5	Jermain Defoe	Tottenham 9-1 Wigan Athletic	November 2009
5	Dimitar Berbatov	Man United 7-1 Blackburn Rovers	November 2010
5	Sergio Aguero	Man City 6-1 Newcastle	October 2015

The five games span two decades and feature some of the biggest scorelines the competition has seen, including two 9-goal team totals.

The record-setters

Andy Cole’s five against Ipswich came in a 9-0 win that still ranks among the largest in Premier League history. Alan Shearer, the league’s all-time top scorer, added his in an 8-0 rout of Sheffield Wednesday. Jermain Defoe’s five helped Tottenham hammer Wigan 9-1, and Sergio Aguero, Manchester City’s record scorer, produced his against Newcastle in 2015. For their broader legacies, see our leaderboards of the most Premier League goals of all time and the most hat-tricks in the Premier League.

The four-goal club and near-misses

Below the five-goal record sits a larger group of players who have scored four in a match, a feat achieved many times across the league’s history. Reaching five, though, requires a rare mix of dominance and finishing, which is why the top of this list has grown so slowly.

Why the record matters

A five-goal game means a striker has, on his own, produced an entire team’s worth of scoring in 90 minutes. That is why the feat has been matched only five times and never surpassed. For related scoring records, see our leaderboards of the most goals in a Premier League season and the fastest hat-trick in soccer.

The short version: five players, Andy Cole, Alan Shearer, Jermain Defoe, Dimitar Berbatov and Sergio Aguero, share the Premier League single-game record with five goals each. As of the 2025 season, no one has ever scored six, leaving the record intact.