Joe Willock became the youngest player to score in six consecutive Premier League appearances with Newcastle’s winner against Sheffield United on Wednesday night.
The Arsenal loanee achieved the feat aged 21 years and 272 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.
Six of the best
There have been 29 individual scoring streaks of six or more Premier League games, starting when Coventry’s Mick Quinn grabbed 10 goals in his first six games in the inaugural 1992-93 season.
Alan Shearer, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Sergio Aguero have achieved the feat three times apiece and Jamie Vardy twice, meaning Willock is only the 22nd player on the list. He joins Shearer and Papiss Cisse as the third to achieve the feat for Newcastle.
Vardy’s 11-game scoring streak for Leicester in 2015 broke former Manchester United man Van Nistelrooy’s Premier League record of 10, with no other player managing more than eight.
Should Willock round off his season with a goal against Fulham, it would be the 13th streak of seven or more. With Vardy and Van Nistelrooy backing up their double-figure exploits with additional runs of eight, Willock would be the 11th different player on that list and once more take Lukaku’s status as the youngest.
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, Manchester City and the Blades.
In good company
The list of the youngest players to achieve each goalscoring streak in the Premier League sees Willock join an illustrious 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-game record.
Lukaku was 22 and 220 days when he scored for the seventh game running, for Everton against Leicester in December 2015, and 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.
