Joe Willock became the youngest player to score in seven consecutive Premier League appearances and the second for Newcastle when he opened the scoring at Fulham on Sunday.
The Arsenal loanee achieved the feat aged 21 years and 276 days, breaking Romelu Lukaku’s record by nearly a year.
Here, the PA news agency looks at his scoring streak and how it compares to previous records.
Seventh heaven
- Jamie Vardy (11) - Leicester, Aug-Nov 2015
- Ruud Van Nistelrooy (10) - Man Utd, Mar-Aug 2003
- Ruud Van Nistelrooy (8) - Man Utd, Dec 2001-Jan 2002
- Daniel Sturridge (8) - Liverpool, Nov 2013-Feb 2014
- Jamie Vardy (8) - Leicester, Oct-Dec 2019
- Mark Stein (7) - Chelsea, Dec 1993-Feb 1994
- Ian Wright (7) - Arsenal, Oct-Nov 1994
- Alan Shearer (7) - Newcastle, Sep-Nov 1996
- Thierry Henry (7) - Arsenal, Mar-May 2000
- Emmanuel Adebayor (7) - Arsenal, Dec 2007-Feb 2008
- Romelu Lukaku (7) - Everton, Nov-Dec 2015
- Sergio Aguero (7) - Man City, May-Sep 2019
- JOE WILLOCK (7) - Newcastle, Apr-May 2021
Willock had already become the youngest player to score in six straight games with his winner against Sheffield United on Wednesday, again breaking the record Lukaku set with Everton in December 2015.
There have now been 13 streaks of seven or more, headlined by Jamie Vardy’s 11 for Leicester in 2015 and Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s 10 for Manchester United back in 2003, with those players each having a separate eight-game run as well meaning Willock is only the 11th player to score in seven straight.
Daniel Sturridge, Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Adebayor, Alan Shearer, Mark Stein, Ian Wright and Sergio Aguero are the other names on that illustrious list, with Shearer the only previous Newcastle player.
Willock’s run began in three appearances as a substitute, playing only 47 minutes in total for his goals against Tottenham, West Ham and Liverpool while he was unused against Burnley and ineligible to face his parent club Arsenal.
He then returned as part of Steve Bruce’s starting line-up and netted against Leicester and Manchester City before his twin record-breaking exploits.
In good company
The list of the youngest players to achieve each goalscoring streak in the Premier League sees Willock join another high-profile group of names.
The early entries are players whose goalscoring impact came at a young age – James Vaughan and Danny Cadamarteri failed to build on their early promise with Everton while James Milner, who scored in back-to-back Leeds games as a 16-year-old, has had a long and successful top-flight career but rarely as a prolific marksman.
Beyond Cadamarteri’s three-game scoring run, the other names on the list are some of the league’s elite strikers – starting with Robbie Fowler, who scored in four straight games for Liverpool as a 19-year-old.
Nicolas Anelka scored in a fifth straight game for Arsenal in 1998 aged 19 years and 239 days, with an age gap of more than two years to Willock’s new six- and seven-game records.
Daniel Sturridge was enjoying a prolific partnership with Luis Suarez at Liverpool when he netted in eight in a row in 2014 aged 24. No player has had a scoring streak of exactly nine games, meaning Van Nistelrooy holds that record as well as the 10-game mark, with Vardy the only player to take it to 11.
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