Who will lead the Premier League in goals scored in 2022–2023? Although we don't yet know the answer to that question, we can provide you some data-driven options to think about. The players listed below are our picks for the Golden Boot.
The Leading Contenders
Haaland, Erling
Manchester City has recruited one of the most sought-after players in world football to their roster for 2022–23, as if they weren't already terrifying enough after scoring a league-high 99 goals on their route to winning the title last season.
Despite being only 22 years old, Erling Haaland has already scored 93 goals in the top division. At his former club Borussia Dortmund, he made 67 German Bundesliga appearances, accounting for 62 of those.
Only Robert Lewandowski outperformed Haaland in the Bundesliga over his three seasons (2019–20 to 2021–2022) in terms of goals (1.04), non–penalty goals (0.9), projected goals (0.85), non–penalty predicted goals (0.72), and minutes per goal (87).
Salah
Although Mohamed Salah has previously won the Premier League Golden Boot three times, the last two times he had to split the honors (2018-19 and 2021-22). He has only ever won the prize outright in his debut season with Liverpool, which was in 2017–18.
Salah has scored the most Premier League goals (118) and taken the most shots of any Premier League player since joining Liverpool in 2017–18. (678). Salah averaged just under 24 Premier League goals each season while playing for Liverpool. The Golden Boot would have been won in each of the previous four seasons with just that.
Darwin Núñez
Darwin will be hoping to win the Golden Boot in 2022–2023 rather than being a source of inspiration for Salah when he joins Liverpool.
It's no easy achievement to win the Golden Boot in your debut season playing in the Premier League, something Erling Haaland will also be attempting to do. The only player to win the award in their first Premier League season was Sunderland's Kevin Phillips in 1999–2000 (30 goals), who was probably even more amazing since it was his first season in a top-flight league in any country. This includes players like Teddy Sheringham, Andy Cole, and Alan Shearer who competed in the top division prior to the formation of the Premier League.
Kane, Harry
The only player in Premier League history to receive the Golden Boot award up to four times was Thierry Henry. Harry Kane of Tottenham Hotspur and Mohamed Salah are vying to be the first player to equal that total; both forwards now have three trophies each.
In 2015–16 and 2016–17, Kane won the Golden Boot twice, but his sole triumph in the previous five Premier League campaigns came in 2020–21, when he topped the standings with 23 goals, one more than Salah. With his six goals at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the England captain also holds the record for the most FIFA World Cup Golden Boots among active Premier League players.
Heung-min Son
In 2021–2022, Son Heung-min stole the show from teammate Harry Kane by becoming the first Asian player in English top-flight history to win the Golden Boot.
With 23 goals, the Spurs forward and Mohamed Salah shared the prize. Salah scored six of those, although he took 53 less shots than the Egyptian, completing them at a rate of 26.7 percent as opposed to Salah's ratio of 16.5 percent. However, none of those were penalties.
Gabriel Jesus
Márcio Amoroso led the Serie A scoring charts for Udinese in 1998–99, Ronaldo was the last to do it in La Liga back in 2003–04 for Real Madrid, Nenê of PSG and Olivier Giroud of PSG shared the Ligue 1 award in 2011–12, and Grafite of VfL Wolfsburg led the Bundesliga scoring charts in 2008–09.
No Brazilian has ever won the Golden Boot in the Premier League history, much alone the English top division. Gabriel Jesus, who joined Arsenal this summer, might be the first.