Which Team Has Scored the Fewest Goals in a Premier League Season?

Goals win games. It really is as simple as that when it comes to football matches. If you fail to score then they very best result that you can hope for is a draw, which might well be enough to get you through a season if you got 38 of them, but that has never happened in the history of the Premier League and is extremely unlikely to happen in the future. As a result, strikers are worth huge amounts of money and tend to be amongst the best-paid players in a team, given the fact that they’re the ones that stick the ball into the back of the net more than any other player.

Realistically, you could score 38 goals in a season as a team and end up winning every single match 1-0, but that is something else that has never happened before. Some teams can score goals for fun, with articles on this site looking at those that have scored the most in the Premier League era, whilst others struggle to hit the back of the net at all. When teams don’t score many goals, they put a lot of pressure on their defences to keep clean sheets in order to try to win points, so it is worth looking at which teams have struggled to score and what that meant for their league survival chances.

Looking At The Statistics

The good thing about the popularity of the Premier League is that it is a division about which there is a wealth of information. As a result, we can look to see which teams have scored the fewest goals since the launch of the English top-flight, with the following being the teams that failed to score as many as 30 goals in a season:

We can see that the teams with the poorest goalscoring record in a Premier League season were Sheffield United in 2020-21 and Derby County in 2007-08 who scored just 20 times each across a 38 game campaign.

Taking A More In-Depth Look

If you want to get a sense of whether a team is likely to survive in the Premier League or not, you just need to take a look at how many goals they’ve scored. Most of the teams above were relegated out of the top-flight, having failed to get enough goals in order to stay up. Here is a closer look at each of the campaigns in question:

Sheffield United (2020-21) – 20 Goals Scored

It would be untrue to describe Sheffield United as a team without any Premier League experience, given the fact that they were one of the division’s founding members and lasted for two seasons before they were relegated in 1994, returning for a year in 2006-07, but a number of campaigns in the Championship and League One certainly meant the club wasn’t exactly full of Premier League quality. They had come up the season before and scored 39 goals, being something of a surprise package as they finished ninth, with Chris Wilder being lauded for his managerial prowess.

Fast-forward a season and that difficult to predict nature that had marked their time in the Premier League was gone. Having had 12 different goalscorers the season prior, only three players managed to get more than one goal throughout the campaign. Part of the problem was that the record signing Rhian Brewster, who had been bought from Liverpool in the summer, failed to score a single goal in the season. Only David McGoldrick, the club’s top scorer, Jayden Bogle and Billy Sharp managed to get on the scoresheet more than once, with the Blades finishing rock bottom.

Derby County (2007-08) – 20 Goals Scored

When a team comes into the Premier League and struggles during the first few weeks of the season, it won’t take long for someone to ponder whether or not they will be as poor as Derby County were in the 2007-08 campaign. That is the extent to which what they achieved was noteworthy for all of the wrong reasons, with the Rams only managing a single win and being relegated with a mere 11 points to their name. A big part of that was down to the fact that they simple failed to score enough goals, with four being enough to be the club’s top scorer.

That honour went to Kenny Miller, with Derby only managing to score two goals in the same game four times across the season. There were 22 matches in which their supporters didn’t even get to celebrate a goal being scored, let alone a win being achieved. A low-scoring campaign might not be the worst thing in the entire world if you manage to keep a few clean sheets, but the Rams conceded 89 times across the course of the campaign. Sufficed to say they finished bottom of the Premier League, with fellow relegated clubs Birmingham City and Reading scoring at least double their goal tally.

Sunderland (2002-03) – 21 Goals Scored

Kevin Phillips features in another article on this site talking about the most goals scored by a player in a single season, finding the net 30 times. That is more than the club as a whole managed in the 2002-03 campaign, with Phillips, who managed to score 113 times in 208 appearance for the Black Cats, only getting six. He wasn’t the only player who had scored plenty of goals in the past but struggled to get on the scoresheet regularly; Tore Andre Flo had scored 50 times across four seasons whilst playing for Chelsea, but he only scored four goals during the campaign.

Add to that the fact that Sunderland had signed Marcus Stewart on account of the fact that he’d been the second-top scorer in the division for Ipswich two seasons prior with 19, yet could only get a single goal for the Black Cats this time around and you can see why it is that they only got 19 points and were relegated at the bottom of the league. West Ham United, who also went down, scored literally double the amount that Sunderland had managed, showing just how difficult life in the Premier League is if you fail to get on scoresheet regularly enough.

Huddersfield Town (2018-19) – 22 Goals Scored

Karlan Grant signed for Huddersfield Town when the club had already played 25 games and scored four goals, which was enough to secure him the top scorer moniker. That tells its own story, with the Terriers enduring a thoroughly miserable second season in the top-flight. They scored a mere 22 goals as a football club, which helped them on their way to three wins and seven draws, finishing bottom of the table with 16 points; fewer points than they’d scored goals. Both Fulham and Cardiff City also got relegated but at least they managed to score 34 goals apiece.

Part of the lack of joy for Huddersfield’s fans came from the fact that they managed just six points between the start of December and the end of the campaign. Sufficed to say, you’re not going to football matches to watch your team be so thoroughly miserable and give you nothing to cheer about. One of the draws came in a home match against Manchester United, but the fact that they had lost their preceding eight games by that point, including a 5-0 loss to Liverpool at Anfield the week before, meant that no one was getting too excited about a meaningless point.

Norwich City (2021-22) – 23 Goals Scored

This isn’t the last time you’ll be reading about Norwich City on this list, with the Canaries struggling with the rigours of life in the Premier League. You’d be forgiven for thinking that they’d learn their lesson about not scoring enough goals, but that isn’t the case. In the 2021-22 season, the Anglian side came into the Premier League having won the Championship the year before with 75 goals to their name. Those goals had seemingly dried up by the time they made it back into the Premier League, with the club scoring a mere 23 times between August and May.

During the course of the campaign they won five games, including a 2-1 win over Everton and a 3-0 away win over Watford. That might have given the fans some sense of encouragement, but they failed to capitalise on those victories and lost 4-0 to Manchester City and 3-1 to Liverpool in two of the three games that followed. Teemu Pukki again led the line well with another 11 goals, but it was another bottom of the table finish for the Canaries. In the end, they finished the season with 22 points to their name, which was one fewer than they managed goals scored.

Norwich City (2019-20) – 26 Goals Scored

On a Saturday afternoon in the middle of September 2019, Norwich City beat defending Champions Manchester City 3-2. Carrow Road was ecstatic at the exploits of Teemu Pukki and Emiliano Buendia, who set the Canaries on their way to a famous victory and convinced many that they would be able to survive, having garnered six points from the five games that they’d played. When the season was all said and done, however, the Canaries would doubtless have been ruing the fact that they scored 11.5% of their goals in that one game against City.

Parts of Merseyside were delighted by the result, given the fact that Liverpool managed to win their first Premier League title since the breakaway from the old First Division with City’s failure, but for Norwich it wasn’t even close to good enough. Pukki would do his bit, finishing with 11 goals for the season, whilst Todd Cantwell’s six from midfielder wasn’t to shabby. The problem came from the fact that no one else in the squad score more than a single goal and the Canaries only scored in 16 of their 38 matches, gaining 21 points and finishing bottom of the table again.

Sunderland (2005-06) – 26 Goals Scored

It is Sunderland again in our list, this time at least improving on their tally from three years earlier thanks to the 26 goals they scored rather than 21. Kevin Phillips had helped them to seventh during their first year back in the Premier League with 30 goals in the 1999-2000 campaign, with the fact that the entire club scored four goals fewer this time around being a major part of the reason why they didn’t stay up. Former Liverpool player Anthony Le Tallec was the club’s top scorer with five goals in all competitions, which probably explains why they were relegated in May.

Midfielder Dean Whitehead managed to score three times in the league alongside le Tallec, Liam Lawrence and Tommy Miller, but it didn’t stop Sunderland being rock bottom of the Premier League 33 out of the 38 games of the season. They won three games across the course of the campaign, drawing six and racking up a measly 15 points. If not for the appalling season that endured a couple of years later, it would have been the worst performance in the top-flight ever. To add insult to injury for the Sunderland fans, the club’s fierce rivals Newcastle United finished seventh, making into the qualifying rounds of the Intertoto Cup.

Middlesbrough (2016-17) – 27 Goals Scored

Names like Patrick Bamford and Alvaro Negredo will be known by most Premier League fans, but they won’t be remembered for the 2016-17 season that they enjoyed at Middlesbrough. Negredo managed nine goals, which is at least mildly respectable, but Bamford only scored the solitary time as they made a beeline for relegation. Aitor Karanka was the manager until the middle of March, at which point he was let go and Steve Agnew was brought in as the caretaker. It made little difference to Boro, who were relegated on the eight of May when they lost to Chelsea.

They weren’t the most porous side defensively, but six 1-0 losses meant that they finished 12 points adrift of safety. A mere 27 goals were scored, which was ten fewer than 18th placed Hull City. It was also two goals shy of the total that Sunderland managed and they finished bottom. Perhaps the only bit of joy that the club’s fans enjoyed all season came on the 26th of April when the team defeated neighbours Sunderland 1-0 at the Riverside Stadium. They actually did the double over the Black Cats, who they defeated 2-1 in the second game of the season.

Aston Villa (2015-16) – 27 Goals Scored

When Alex Ferguson joined Manchester United, the Red Devils had won the same number of league titles and European Cups as Aston Villa. It is fair to say, therefore, that Villa are a big club that has maybe struggled to live up to that billing in recent years. Jack Grealish went on to become a £100 million player when he joined Manchester City, but in 2015-16 he was too busy partying to score goals, managing just one across the campaign. That was the same number as Gabriel Agbonlahor, who later became a presenter for a talk radio station.

It was Aston Villa’s 28th consecutive season in the top-flight, so their fans would’ve been forgiven for thinking that they’d be able to escape the relegation battle that they found themselves in. When Jordan Ayew finished as the top scorer for the team with seven goals, however, it was fairly clear that they were in trouble. They won just three games all season, drawing eight for a total of 17 points. Things looked like they might be different when they beat Bournemouth on the opening day of the campaign, but they didn’t win again until the middle of January, completing a miserable spell.

Fulham (2020-21) – 27 Goals Scored

Life wasn’t much fun at Craven Cottage in the 2020-21 campaign. Bobby Decordova-Reid would finish as Fulham’s top scorer for the season, scoring five times in the league and seven times in total. Whilst they lost plenty of the games that they played, it was actually the draws that sealed their fate. With 13 draws across the course of the campaign, the would’ve stayed up if they’d managed to turn even half of those into wins. Instead, they could only score 27 times in the 38 games that they played, being relegated back into the Championship as a result of that.

It would be untrue to say that it was a poor season all round for Fulham, with some decent results making it a noteworthy campaign at times. They took four points off defending champions Liverpool, who were having struggles of their own, earning a 1-1 draw at the Cottage and winning 1-0 at Anfield. In fact, Merseyside was a happy hunting ground for the London club, who also won 2-0 at Goodison Park. The fans were suspicious that it might be a tricky season when they lost five of their first six games, only managing to break that up with a draw against fellow relegated side Sheffield United.

Huddersfield Town (2017-18) – 28 Goals Scored

There aren’t many teams on this list that managed to score so few goals and yet remain in the league, but Huddersfield Town are one of them. They had been promoted into the Premier League thanks to the work of David Wagner, who was well-fancied on account of the fact that he was Jürgen Klopp’s best man. Wagner left at the end of the season, but not before he led the Terriers to a respectable 16th place finish. This was in spite of the fact that they only scored 28 goals, which was less than the amount scored by two of the relegated sides and level with the other one.

The interesting thing about Huddersfield that season is that they scored more than a third of their total goals in three games. They beat Crystal Palace 3-0 and both Watford and Bournemouth 4-1, but when your top goalscorer is only finding the back of the net seven times you know it’s going to be a long campaign. There were enough wins in there to make it a fun few months for the supporters, but there just wasn’t enough for them escape making it onto our list. Sadly, they didn’t heed the warning that they were given and bring in a goalscorer, which is why they were relegated the next year.

Swansea City (2017-18) – 28 Goals

Swansea City were promoted back to the top flight ahead of the 2011-12 season for the first time since the early 1980’s. The Swan’s free-flowing possession-based play proved highly effective, guiding the Welsh side to mid table finishes in each of their first five seasons, with a League Cup triumph thrown into the mix in 2013. In season six, Francesco Guidolin was sacked after winning just one of his opening six matches. Bob Bradley proved to be a disastrous replacement, lasting just twelve games, leaving Swansea bottom of the table. Incoming manager Paul Clement produce a miracle to guide his team to 15th, but he couldn’t repeat the trick the following campaign.

The previous season’s top scorer with 15 goals, Fernando Llorente, departed for Tottenham Hotspur. No player reached double figures in front of goal in 2017-18, with top scorers Jordan Ayew and the on-loan Tammy Abraham combining for just 12 league goals. Huddersfield Town matched Swansea for that season’s lowest scorers with 28 goals but finished four points better off. Swansea crucially lost both to the team directly above them (Southampton) and below (Stoke City), at home in the two last games of the season to condemn the club to relegation back down to the Championship.

Birmingham City (2005-06) – 28 Goals Scored

When two out of the three relegated teams in a season make it onto a list of the terms with the fewest goals scored, you know it wasn’t a great season for the fans. Having already told you about Sunderland, this time it is the turn of a Birmingham City side that had Steve Bruce as the manager, with the only fun in the season being the fact that they had a couple of cup runs. They made it to the sixth round of the FA Cup before being eliminated by eventual winners Liverpool, getting to the quarter-finals of the League Cup before Manchester United put paid to that fun.

Knowing how many goals the club’s top scorer managed to get is always an interesting indicator of how things have gone for a team, with Jiří Jarošík picking the ball out of the back of the net just five times in the Premier League. They won eight times and drew ten, which is a lot more than some other sides on this list, but the lack of killer instinct in front of goal is ultimately what sent them down. They missed out on staying up by just four points and had a better goal different than Portsmouth who finished in 17th, so scoring more might have kept them up.

Middlesbrough (2008-09) – 28 Goals Scored

Eight years before Middlesbrough were relegated with just 27 goals to their name, the club were taught a lesson in the importance of scoring when netted 28 times but missed out on staying in the Premier League by just three points. Hull City scored 11 times more than them, which was enough to get them to 35 points rather than the 34 that the Boro went down with. Even the team that finished bottom this season, West Bromwich Albion, managed to score 36 times and give their fans something to cheer about. It was another thoroughly miserable season at the Riverside.

Turkish footballer Tuncay scored seven times in the league, which was enough for him to win the club’s Golden Boot award. There was unlikely to be much celebrating by him or his teammates, however, when you consider that they failed to score in 17 of the 38 games that they played. Arguably the biggest win of the season came when they beat Liverpool 2-0 at home, wit the Merseyside club going toe-to-toe with Manchester United for the title. In the end, though, that will have provided the supporters with little consolation when you consider they got relegated.

Norwich City (2013-14) – 28 Goals Scored

Norwich City have already been on the list twice, telling you that it is a club that not only doesn’t know how to score very often when it makes it into the Premier League but is also not very good at learning from its mistakes. A few years before the club was relegated in 2020 and again a couple of years later, the Canaries should’ve realised the importance of bringing in a goalscorer when you consider that they were sent down after scoring just 28 times. That was four fewer than bottom placed Cardiff City and 12 fewer than fellow relegated side Fulham managed.

Norwich were just three points shy of West Bromwich Albion when they went down, losing to them at home on the fifth of April. The final score was 1-0, so if they had been able to turn that into a win then they might have made things more interesting. Ultimately, they’d likely still have gone down because the Baggies had a better goal difference than them, but it was a miserable May that sealed their fate. They only scored twice across the entire month but lost all four games, with another lack of goals in May meaning that relegation was entirely inevitable for them.

Burnley (2014-15) – 28 Goals Scored

Sean Dyche isn’t exactly known for his exciting attacking football, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that one of his teams is on the list. It was the club’s first time back in the Premier League for four years, but it began with two losses and just one goal score. The supporters didn’t see any goals in the next four games, which really should’ve been a sign that things weren’t going very well for them. Even when they did eventually get on the scoresheet it only resulted in a 2-2 draw with Leicester City, with the same number of goals scored in their next three matches.

That it took until the eighth of November for Burnley to get a win on the board is a part of the problem that they had in the 2014-15 season. A late flurry of goals, by which we mean they scored twice in their final three matches, wasn’t enough to save them from the drop. Danny Ings was the club’s top scorer with a genuinely respectable 11 Premier League goals, but when one player is scoring more than a third of all of the goals that you manage for the entire campaign you can’t be expecting to stay up. They didn’t, but they did make back a couple of years later.

Leeds United (1996-97) – 28 Goals Scored

Leeds United were the last champions of the old First Division in 1991-92, but struggled to take that form into the newly created Premier League. Howard Wilkinson was replaced by the typically pragmatic George Graham whose time at Arsenal, albeit successful, gave birth to the chant “one-nil to the Arsenal”. Despite having the attacking talents of Tony Yeboah, Ian Rush, Mark Hateley, Brian Deane (scorer of the first Premier League goal), Rod Wallace and Lee Sharp, The Whites netted just 28 time during the course of the season.

That goal tally remains Leeds United’s lowest scoring league season in their history. It was also a Premier League record which would remain until Sunderland’s 21-goal season in 2001-02. The flip side of George Graham’s conservatism would be seen at the other end of the pitch. Leeds conceded just 38 goals, the fourth best in the division, keeping 20 clean sheets along the way thanks to the efforts of Nigel Martyn, Lucas Radebe, Gary Kelly et al. As a result, Leeds finished in the relative comfort of eleventh position, six points clear of relegation.

West Bromwich Albion (2002-03) – 29 Goals Scored

We are now into the realm of clubs scoring just shy of the 30 goals that they would’ve needed to avoid being on this list, with West Bromwich Albion scoring 29 times during the 2002-03 campaign. It was actually eight goals more than Sunderland managed, but still nowhere near enough to keep them in the top-flight. Bolton Wanderers finished the season in 17th with 44 points, which was 16 more than the Baggies managed. They also scored 41 goals, or 12 more than West Brom were able to score, which is just part of the difference between the two sides.

They weren’t as bad as Sunderland, but that is about the most complimentary thing that you can say about Gary Megson’s side. Two players, Daniele Dichio and Scott Dobie, managed to score five goals apiece in order to share the title of top scorer in the Premier League for West Brom. That Dichio finished as the overall top scorer thanks to eight goals in all competitions paints a picture of a side that simply didn’t know how to hit the back of the net. Three defeats in succession started the campaign and things didn’t really look up from there, with only six wins all season.

Sunderland (2001-02) – 29 Goals Scored

There aren’t many teams on this list that scored fewer than 30 goals in a season but stayed up, yet Sunderland are one of them. They made it through the 2001-02 campaign scoring a mere 29 goals, but stayed in the Premier League on account of the fact that they got four more points than 18th-placed Ipswich Town. The Black Cats actually started their top-flight campaign with a home win over the Tractor Boys, which was ultimately the difference maker. When you bear in mind that Ipswich beat them 5-0 in the return leg, you can see how important the victory was.

It is that man Kevin Phillips whose name comes up again when discussing Sunderland, with the England striker scoring 11 times in the league to secure the club’s top scorer title. There were 16 games across the course of the campaign in which the Sunderland fans didn’t even get to celebrate a goal, but two draw in their last two matches was enough to see them stay in the Premier League and allow the fans to cheer that at the very least. A home win over Everton was about the most exciting thing in a season that saw them barely scrape survival, but scrape it nonetheless.

Watford (2006-07) – 29 Goals Scored

The 2006-07 campaign was one that featured a few records that Watford were involved in, but not in a good way. For starters, Paul Robinson scored a free-kick for Tottenham Hotspur over Ben Foster, becoming just the third goalkeeper to score in the English top-flight at the time. Alec Chamberlain came on as a substitute in one match, making him the oldest player to play in the Premier League. That, of course, doesn’t suggest a squad that was full of young and vibrant players, which might help to explain why relegation beckoned for Aidy Boothroyd’s side.

Once again, a quick look at the club’s top goalscorer paints a picture. The honour went to Bouazza thanks to the six league goals that he scored, which was a decent chunk of the 29 that the club managed in total. They campaign took a while to get going, with four losses in their first four matches and no win until November. The main bit of fun that the supporters got to enjoy was in the FA Cup, where they made it all the way to the semi-final before Manchester United defeated them. Just 28 points saw them finish ten from safety, with a lack of goals a big problem.

Manchester City (2006-07) – 29 Goals Scored

A few years before Sheikh Mansour arrived at Manchester City and turned the club into one of the world’s most successful sportswashing operations, Manchester City were a club that bounced between divisions and were a threat to nobody. Perhaps that is best demonstrated by their place on this list, in spite of the fact that they’re one of only a few that scored fewer than 30 goals in the course of a season and yet still stayed up. Stuart Pearce was the manager and ‘Psycho’ couldn’t get them playing exciting enough football to rack up the goals.

Joey Barton, a midfielder by trade, finished at the top scorer thanks to the fact that he scored six times in the Premier League. It was a symptom of the club’s woes, with just 29 goals being scored all season. In fact, the only other club in the division to score so few goals was Watford, who you’ve just read about. Both Sheffield United and Charlton Athletic scored more than Man City, but it was the Cityzens’ defence that helped to keep them up. In the end they finished 14th, in spite of the fact that they drew two and lost four of their last six matches, scoring three times.

Sunderland (2016-17) – 29 Goals Scored

Having survived in the Premier League with just 29 goals to their name in the 2001-02 season, it is perhaps fair that some Sunderland fans might have hoped that they could do the same 15 years later. This time, though, they didn’t score the goals in the right order and managed just six wins across the entire season. This was in spite of the fact that Jermaine Defoe scored a genuinely decent total of 15 league goals to end as their top scorer, which is significantly more than pretty much every other team on this list’s top scorer managed to get for them in the league.

Of course, when one player is scoring more than half of your goals, it is always going to be difficult to stay up. They scored two goals more than fellow relegated side Middlesbrough, but they still finished rock bottom thanks to a porous defence. A mere 24 points saw them end up 16 points clear of safety, with supporters not even being able to cheer the scoring of a goal in 20 of the games that they played. It took until the fifth of November for them to register a win, but that wasn’t going to be a date to be remembered considering the eight losses and two draws that had preceded it.