Top scorers on the final day of Premier League seasons

The final day of an invariably long, hard league campaign can be the setting for season-defining matches.

However, more often than not, everything of relevance has already been finalised for both clubs involved, giving many of the simultaneous set of matches the care-free recklessness of the last day of primary school.

It's no surprise that the final round of matches invariably produces more goals than the average across the preceding nine months of each season. Here are the players, with their favourite toy stuffed into their backpacks, that have taken advantage at the end of each season.

10. Teddy Sheringham - 7

Never blessed with burning pace, timing always underpinned Teddy Sheringham's superb career. By the summer of 2004, aged 38, what little speed Sheringham ever had was long gone - yet, that didn't stop the veteran from coming off the bench to score for Portsmouth.

No player in the history of the competition has ever scored in the last game of a campaign at a more senior point of their career. More than a decade earlier, Sheringham had scored on the final day of the inaugural Premier League season.

9. Thierry Henry - 7

It was only fitting that the final Premier League match ever played at Arsenal's legendary Highbury Stadium was marked with a hat-trick from the man that lit up the narrow slip of green more often than anyone else.

Thierry Henry's treble on the last day of the 2005/06 campaign secured Champions League qualification for Arsenal with a 4-2 win over Wigan, providing one final golden memory for the Frenchman in the ground he would call "my garden".

8. Yakubu - 7

Portsmouth were cruising to a 4-1 victory on the final day of the 2003/04 season but Yakubu was still furiously charging around the top of the pitch. The forceful striker fondly known as 'The Yak' had already completed his hat-trick inside the opening 31 minutes and got his fourth of the afternoon in the dying embers.

However, Yakubu was bereft when Pompey manager Harry Redknapp strolled into the dressing room. The striker had remembered a pre-season bet that his boss had chosen to forget and finished the campaign one strike shy of the 20-goal marker that would have earned him £20,000 from Redknapp's own pocket.

As Redknapp recalls telling his disconsolate forward: "If I'd have known that, I'd have subbed you straight away."

7. Sergio Aguero - 7

When Martin Tyler uttered the immortal line of commentary: "I swear you'll never see anything like this every again," he was not entirely correct.

Yes, Manchester City's last gasp comeback against QPR to snatch the 2012 Premier League title is yet to be repeated. However, Sergio Aguero has scored six more goals on the final day since the most important one of his entire career.

6. Sadio Mane - 7

For 21 minutes on a sunny afternoon in May 2019, Sadio Mane's strike against Wolves had Liverpool sitting top of the Premier League table. Manchester City duly overhauled a one-goal deficit away to Brighton, pipping Mane and Liverpool to the title by a single point.

Liverpool's maiden Premier League crown had long been confirmed by the time Mane scored another final-day goal the following year, delivering the last strike in a record-laden campaign that saw Jurgen Klopp's side amass an insurmountable 99 points this time.

5. Jamie Vardy - 7

Jamie Vardy may be the author of seven Premier League final-day goals but he has only won the last match of the season twice.

On two different occasions, separated by three years, Leicester have ended the campaign with a defeat against Tottenham despite a brace from Vardy. During his debut season in the top flight, Vardy did sign off with a win and a goal in a 5-1 mauling of already-relegated QPR as Leicester celebrated their miraculous survival of 2015.

4. Matt Le Tissier - 8

Matt Le Tissier may have sullied his reputation with some tin hat conspiracies in his post-playing career but the Southampton icon delivered a fitting sign-off to his time in red and white stripes.

The final Premier League goal ever scored in the cramped confines of Southampton's The Dell came off Le Tissier's boot. Spanking a volley from the edge of the box with characteristic extravagance, Le Tissier snatched a 3-2 victory for the Saints over Arsenal in the 89th minute.

Even the defeated manager Arsene Wenger conceded that the goal was "perfect".

3. Les Ferdinand - 9

Across his Premier League career before the month of May, Les Ferdinand averaged a hugely respectable goal every other game. However, once the season ticked into its final weeks, Ferdinand's goal return shot up to one every 125 minutes.

Ferdinand is one of only two players to score on the final day of the season with as many as four different clubs; making his mark in the division with QPR before a prolific but deceptively brief spell with Newcastle United. Ferdinand returned to the capital with Spurs and finished his career as an expert closer at West Ham.

2. Andrew Cole - 9

Despite scoring on the final day of eight separate seasons, Andrew Cole's most memorable campaign closer may be the one where he failed to find the back of the net.

The widely-held belief that Cole gave up a mountain of chances against West Ham in 1995, a game that Manchester United drew 1-1 to cede the title to Blackburn Rovers, is a gross exaggeration.

Nevertheless, Cole more than made up for any profligacy - perceived or otherwise - with the winning goal against Tottenham four years later, sealing the first title in United's unprecedented European treble.

1. Harry Kane - 11

For years, Harry Kane was castigated as an infamously slow starter to Premier League seasons - it did take him 14 games to score his first goal in August.

However, the Premier League's second-best goalscorer has repeatedly peaked at the business end of campaigns. While Tottenham's fight for the league title has never gone down to the final day, Kane has routinely moved up a gear in the race for scoring honours.

Never was this more prevalent than at the tail end of the 2016/17 term. With Romelu Lukaku topping the charts heading into the final week of the season, Kane scored seven goals in four days, culminating in a hat-trick against Hull City to close out the campaign with his second successive Golden Boot.

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