Saturday, 10 May 2025

The King; his Heir Apparent…and The Pharaoh waiting in the wings – Shearer, Kane and Salah, games and goals per season, updated to the end of the 2023-2024 season

(Yes, I know we're almost at the end of the 2024-2025 season, work with me here) 

One major thing, for the purposes of this update post, did happen since the 2022-2023 version of this post. Harry Kane moved to Bayern Munich. 

This was probably a very good thing for him (something is definitely rotten in the state of Tottenham Hotspur). 

And I've previously included stats from non-Premier League football for Salah, so it's definitely doable method-wise. 

It does mean that it will no longer be as direct a comparison, but I think that's okay. 

On to the graphs: 

First, we have percentage of games played, up to the point of being 30 for all three players. This comes first because the original question L posed was whether Kane's putatively dodgy ankle would allow him to catch Shearer's Premier League goal tally. 

Looking at up to age 30, Shearer's curve has a serious down curve here, because 30 was when he had his second big injury (carrying that Newcastle team). 

Although Salah and Kane's curves have different shapes, they are now converging on the same point in terms of percentage of games they played at 30. Whether this is changes in how coaches use players, resting them more often now to allow more games overall, I don't know. Line graph of percentage of games played per season by Shearer, Kane and Salah up to the age of 30. The line for Alan Shearer is blue. It is a parabola that starts at just over 10% per year at the age of 17 and ends about 64% at the age of 30. The curves for Kane (orange) and Salah (grey) have very similar start and end points, at 35% percent at 17, and finishing just under 90% at 30. The shapes are different though with the Salah curve going higher. Using the "extrapolated till age 35" data, the curves look like this: This is a line graph of percentage of games played per season, extrapolated to 35 for Shearer, Kane and Salah. The line for Shearer is blue, and starts about 19% at 17, and finishes at 78% at 35 years of age. The line for Kane (orange) finishes at the same point but starts 35% at 17. The curve for Salah (grey) starts at the same point as the Kane line, but ends at about 50% at the age of 35. 

It's Salah's curve that shows the greatest drop here (because at 31 he had an injury that kept him out of several games [Hamstring tears are no one's friend), while Shearer and Kane's curves converge to similar points. 

Now Goals per game 

Using the data up to everyone reaching 30 Line graph of goals per game up to 30 for Shearer, Kane and Salah. The line for Shearer (blue) is a parabola curving from about 0.15 at 17 years of age to 0.4 at 30, with the highest point coming at about 0.62 at 24. The lines for Kane (orange) and Salah (grey) are pretty much straight lines. The Kane line runs from 0.4 at 17 to 0.8 at 30. The Salah line runs from about 0.8 at 17 to about 0.6 at 30. Again, Shearer is the odd one out because of his injury, although to me, the interesting thing is how similar the shape of the curves are for Kane and Salah. The curve also makes it clear that, although Salah is indeed a very awesome striker, Kane is the one who is more of an out and out goal getter. Plus, the entirely ridiculous stat that Kane had a goal per game in 2023-2024. 

Using the extrapolated data, Kane stands out: Line graph showing goals per game extrapolated from the present data to 35 for Shearer, Kane and Salah. The Shearer line (blue) is curve, from 0.22 at age 17 to 0.35 at age 25, with a high of about 0.61 about 26/27. The Salah line (grey) is also a curve, from about 0.7 at age 17 to 0.48 at age 35, with a high point of 0.6 at 29. The Kane line (orange) is straight because of his truly excellent goal per game at age 30. It starts at 0.4 at 17, and ends at 0.85 at 35. Kane's curve ends much higher than the other two, possible because of that ridiculous 2023-2024 season, with Salah's curve going down because of his injury in 2023-2024. 

Finally, we have the goals per possible game, which would normally perk Shearer's stats up because he had fewer opportunities to have games to score goals in, but, as I said, his injury in the year he was 30 meant his curve really does parabola downwards in this graph. Line chart of goals per possible game up to the age of 30 for Shearer, Kane and Salah. The Shearer line (blue) is a curve. It starts at 0 at 18, and ends at 0.3 at 30. The high point about 0.5 at 25. Kane (orange) and Salah (grey) are straight lines, still going up at 30. The Kane line starts at 0.19 at 17, and ends at 0.7 at 30. The Salah line starts at 0 at 17, and ends at 0.59 at 30. 

The other two curves, again have the same shape, but Kane is higher again. On the extrapolated till 35 goals per possible game Line chart of goals per possible game extrapolated up to the age of 35 for Shearer, Kane and Salah. The Shearer line (blue) is a curve, starting at 0 at 17, and ending at 0.3 at 35, with a high point of 0.5 at 28. The Salah line (grey) is also a curve, starting at 0 at 17 as well, and ending at 0.4 at 35, with a high point of 0.5 at 29. The Kane line (orange) is almost a straight line, it starts at 0.19 at 17 and ending at 0.78 at 35. Shearer and Salah have similar trajectories, possibly because they both had bad years around 30/31 with injuries, while Kane's curve has gone shooting off at the top because of his excellent 2023-2024.
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