Premier League top scorer odds 2024/25: how do favourites perform?

With Euro fever now very much a thing of the past, it’s time to look ahead to the return of domestic football.

Ahead of the summer action in Germany, I took a look at previous favourites to see how often the market leader gets the job done in that respect.

In terms of top-scorer bets, my luck was very much out at the Euros as Kai Havertz decided he'd only score from the spot, while Phil Foden seemingly decided that getting on the ball wasn’t a good idea for an attacking player. Oh well, what can you do?

Anyway, having looked at how previous Euro favourites fared, I’ve decided to do something similar for the domestic scene, but with a little twist.

Instead of looking at how many previous outright favourites won the Premier League, I’m looking at how previous top-scorer favourites performed.

How do favourites perform?

My question, as it was six weeks ago ahead of the European Championships, is how do top-scorer favourites typically perform in the Premier League?

In other words, I’m looking to see how often the player who goes into the season as the favourite ends the campaign with the most goals.

Prior to writing this article, I could quite comfortably recite recent PL top-scorers (what a show off, I know), but beyond Erling Haaland last year, I couldn’t remember how many of those Golden Boot winners were the most fancied in the betting before the season began, prompting some digging.

I was slightly surprised by what I found. Of course, Erling Haaland was a massive favourite to scoop the award ahead of the most recently concluded Premier League season and the Norwegian duly delivered, scoring 27 goals, nine fewer than he did the previous year.

We’ll take a look at how previous favourites have done in greater detail below, but let’s first look at how the Golden Boot market shapes up ahead of the 2024/25 campaign.

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Premier League top scorer odds 2024/25

Here are the current top scorer odds ahead of the 2024/25 Premier League Season, and it will come as no surprise to see a certain Manchester City forward heading the market.

All odds correct at the time of publishing on 17/07/2024. All odds from bet365.

Player	Odds
Erling Haaland	8/11
Mohamed Salah	10/1
Ollie Watkins	16/1
Darwin Nunez	16/1
Cole Palmer	20/1
Alexander Isak	20/1
Ivan Toney	22/1
Heung-min Son	33/1
Bukayo Saka	33/1
Kai Havertz	33/1
All other players	40/1+

The full market for the 2024/25 Premier League top scorer can be found here.

Recent Premier League top scorer favourites

The table below lists the last ten players who entered the Premier League season as the favourite in the top-scorer market.

Season	Favourite	Odds
2023/24	Erling Haaland	8/11
2022/23	Erling Haaland	3/1
2021/22	Harry Kane	7/2
2020/21	Mohamed Salah	11/2
2019/20	Harry Kane	4/1
2018/19	Harry Kane	9/4
2017/18	Harry Kane	7/2
2016/17	Harry Kane	4/1
2015/16	Sergio Aguero	4/1
2014/15	Sergio Aguero	4/1

As we can see, there are some likely lads here. Former Spurs goal grabber Harry Kane has begun no less than five of the last ten Premier League seasons as the favourite to get his hands on the Golden Boot. Both Erling Haaland and Sergio Aguero been favourites more than once during that time.

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Previous Premier League top scorers

Let’s look at some previous winners of the most prestigious individual award that the Premier League has to offer.

The table below shows the last ten Premier League top scorers, where they were in the betting pre-season, the goals they scored and the average goals scored per game, plus xG for those who top-scorer after the 2016/17 season.

Season	Top scorer	Favourite?	Goals	Goals (per 90)	xG (per 90)
2023/24	Erling Haaland	Yes	27	0.95	0.92
2022/23	Erling Haaland	Yes	36	1.17	1.02
2021/22	Mohamed Salah & Heung-min Son	No (2nd favourite & outsider)	23	0.75 & 0.69	0.74 & 0.48
2020/21	Harry Kane	No (top five in the betting)	23	0.67	0.59
2019/20	Jamie Vardy	No (outsider)	23	0.68	0.57
2018/19	Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah	No (top five in the betting & outsider)	22	0.73, 0.64 & 0.61	0.74, 0.44 & 0.56
2017/18	Mohamed Salah	No (outsider)	32	0.99	0.75
2016/17	Harry Kane	Yes	29	1.04	-
2015/16	Harry Kane	No (outsider)	25	0.67	-
2014/15	Sergio Aguero	Yes	26	0.92	-

The table above shows that favourites perform well, but it hasn't been a case of total dominance in recent years. As we can see, four of the last ten pre-season favourites have ended the season having scored the most goals.

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What else does the table show us? For starters, it shows that to finish as the top scorer nowadays you're going to need to score comfortably more than 20 goals. The average number of goals scored by the last ten Golden Boot winners is 26.6.

It also shows us that unless you’re playing for the biggest four or five clubs, you’ve got little chance of scoring more than everyone else. Only one of the last ten top-scorers (including ties) has played for a team other than Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal.

Recap - how do favourites perform?

So, how do market leaders perform? To be fair, as you’d probably expect, they perform reasonably well. On top of the four favourites who won, three of the others were in the first five in the betting. Only three of the last ten Golden Boot winners were considered an outsider in the pre-season betting.

Make of this what you will. Personally, the only real conclusion that I draw here is the fact that recent history tells us that one of the big dogs, of which there are a handful, will likely land this top award.

Then again, every now and then there’s an outlier. Outsiders can top-score in the Premier League, so if you fancy someone at big odds, why not go for it?

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