Ranking replacements for the 25 best forwards in Premier League history
Mohamed Salah is off and the rumour mill is spinning now that the need for a Liverpool replacement has been confirmed.
Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise is the Reds’ top choice of ten options, but chances are they will have to set their sights a tad lower than the best left winger in world football.
It’s no mean feat replacing a legendary forward like Salah, as proven by the following list of players drafted in for the 25 best forwards in Premier League history, most of which have paled in comparison to their predecessors.
We’ve ranked the direct(ish) replacements from worst to best after considering a range of factors including the status of the departee and the cost of the successor.
25) Alan Shearer (Blackburn) – Per Pedersen
We’re bending the rules here slightly as Pederson didn’t arrive until the winter transfer window, but worthy of mention as Rovers were linked with Gabriel Batistuta and then Thierry Henry before arriving at Pedersen, who scored one goal in 12 appearances as the replacement for the Premier League’s greatest ever goalscorer.
24) Gareth Bale (Tottenham) – Nacer Chadli
A world-record £85m fee spent on Chadli, Erik Lamela, Roberto Soldado, Paulinho, Etienne Capoue, Vlad Chiriches and, admittedly, Christian Eriksen might be the worst transfer business in football history.
23) Ryan Giggs (Manchester United) – Angel Di Maria
Replacing a guy whose love for Manchester United is perhaps more deep-seated than anyone’s having spent all his career as a Red Devil, winning an absurd 13 Premier League titles with them, with a guy whose hatred for the club might just be unmatched is peak post-Sir Alex DNA.
22) Luis Suarez (Liverpool) – Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert
Not a great surprise that a man who hangs a picture of himself on the wall of his family home would think he could fix the firework-throwing Manchester City misfit Balotelli, but in fairness to Brendan Rogers he did try to counterbalance the mercurial but hugely talented Italian with a £4m striker playing football at least two decades after his style was in vogue.
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21) Harry Kane (Tottenham) – Brennan Johnson
The Welshman was fortunate in that he avoided direct and inevitably damaging comparisons to Kane as Richarlison had arrived the year before to fill that much vaunted spot in football as a Harry Kane backup before taking on the central striker role while Johnson played chiefly on the right wing.
Turns out both Tottenham and Kane needed a divorce to end trophy droughts, and we assume they remain delighted at their respective trajectories since parting ways.
20) Didier Drogba (Chelsea) – N/A
No one would have been worthy after Drogba literal last kick of a football for Chelsea (in the first spell) was to seal the Champions League trophy from the penalty spot, so they decided not to bother before belatedly coming to terms with the reality of Fernando Torres being wholly unable to fill the void and signing another striker to pale in comparison in January as Demba Ba was drafted in from Newcastle.
19) Son Heung-min (Tottenham) – Mathys Tel
The last man to care about Tottenham Hotspur football club departed and a guy who quite clearly couldn’t care less about them is now playing, or rather not really playing, in his stead.
The mind boggles as to how the Tottenham chiefs took a look at Tel on loan last season and decided he was the man to replace Son’s 173 goals and 101 assists in 454 games.
18) Thierry Henry (Arsenal) – Eduardo
A footballer defined by a double leg break courtesy of Birmingham’s Martin Taylor which we see through Cesc Fabregas’ fraught and panicked eyes. Who knows, maybe he could have been the new Thierry Henry? We do – he couldn’t have been.
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17) Andy Cole (Manchester United) – Diego Forlan
Cole left for Blackburn in January 2002 as the arrival of Ruud van Nistelrooy in the summer saw his game time limited at Old Trafford. Forlan became a figure of fun at United, offering rival fans a blessed opportunity to poke fun at something Red Devils related as he failed to score in any of his first 27 Premier League appearances before achieving cult hero status with a game-winning brace against Liverpool.
16) Eden Hazard (Chelsea) – Christian Pulisic
Why oh why did he leave? Chelsea haven’t been the same since and Hazard certainly wasn’t. The difference being that Chelsea care about that and Hazard – God bless him – evidently couldn’t give two sh*ts.
He got 31 goal contributions in his last Premier League season. Pulisic got a perfectly reasonable 15 in his debut campaign but it went downhill from there.
15) Dennis Bergkamp (Arsenal) – Alexander Hleb
Hleb had a bit of the Bergkamps about him – he was easy on the eye – but often flattered to deceive as part of a squad as a whole that never quite had the X-factor that Bergkamp so often provided in the glory years under Arsene Wenger.
14) Gianfranco Zola (Chelsea) – Hernan Crespo and Adrian Mutu
The first summer of Roman Abramovich, when Chelsea supporter eyes were glued to Sky Sports News to learn which star player they had signed in the last hour, was the most perfectly Zola time for Zola to depart. He was too pure for all that money stuff and gave pleasure to fans and neutrals alike that Crespo and Mutu couldn’t hope to replicate and never got close to.
13) Alan Shearer (Newcastle) – Obafemi Martins
They tried an opposite thing – replacing a striker who can barely run but was the Premier League’s greatest ever finisher with a guy who could run with the absolute best of them and finish only occasionally.
12) Sadio Mane (Liverpool) – Cody Gakpo
Luis Diaz had arrived in January before Mane left and was more of a like-for-like replacement and Gakpo has spent his time at Liverpool as a winger ranging from not quite good enough to the scapegoat for all things negative at the club.
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11) Riyad Mahrez (Manchester City) – Jeremy Doku
The blasé way we viewed Manchester City’s wonderful collection of forwards in their peak era is exposed very effectively by the majority now (quite reasonably) believing Doku to be doing a good job for the current team. He’s got 17 goals and 32 assists in 120 appearances. Mahrez got 78 goals and 59 assists in 236 games. A criminally underrated footballer.
10) Wayne Rooney (Manchester United) – Romelu Lukaku
Fun fact: Lukaku scored more goals (26) in his debut season for United than Rooney managed in any of his last five at the club. Ipso facto, if we ignore the fact Rooney was playing in a deeper role, got many more assists and is the Red Devils’ greatest goalscorer of all time, Lukaku > Rooney.
9) Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United) – Antonio Valencia and Gabriel Obertan
A bold move from Sir Alex Ferguson to spend just £20m of the £80m they got from Real Madrid to replace arguably the greatest footballer in the world, and hedging his bets with two for a quarter of the price of one didn’t go brilliantly.
Valencia predictably failed to match Ronaldo’s absurd numbers and was subsequently turned into a very capable right-back, while Obertan made just 27 appearances for United, scoring just one goal and assisting four.
8) Robert Pires (Arsenal) – Thomas Rosicky
Not quite a direct replacement as Rosicky played a more central role. A footballer Gooners might describe as a ‘great servant of the club’ without getting close to the heights reached by his gloriously stylish predecessor.
7) Sergio Aguero (Manchester City) – N/A
While the masses panicked as to how Pep Guardiola might replace a guaranteed 20+ goals a season he smiled wistfully and simply didn’t, playing without a centre-forward for most of the 2020/21 and 2021/22 seasons, scoring 83 and 99 goals respectively on their way to those titles, enraging Proper Football Men up and down the country.
6) Robin van Persie (Arsenal) – Olivier Giroud
Perhaps deemed a not insignificant downgrade by many but Van Persie scoring 96 goals at a rate of 0.49 per game and Giroud notching 73 at 0.41 acts as excellent evidence that the French striker never got the credit he deserved on these shores.
5) Ruud van Nistelrooy (Manchester United) – N/A
Cristiano Ronaldo got 17 goals, Wayne Rooney got 13 and Louis Saha chipped in with eight as United eased to the title in their first season after Van Nistelrooy, before Carlos Tevez joined a year later to create arguably the greatest forward line in Premier League history.
4) Fernando Torres (Liverpool) – Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll
Signing one of the most naturally gifted strikers ever to grace the Premier League for a bargain fee as a replacement for Chelsea-bound Fernando Torres should have this one at least vying for top spot, but we also had to factor in the move for Suarez.
3) Alexis Sanchez (Arsenal) – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Henrikh Mkhitaryan arrived from United as Sanchez went the other way in January 2018, but Aubameyang arrived in that same winter window to plug the goal gap left behind by the Chilean forward. Only Thierry Henry (0.68 per game) and Ian Wright (0.54) have scored goals at a better rate than Aubameyang (0.53) in the Premier League, with Sanchez (0.49) joint fourth with Robin van Persie.
2) Raheem Sterling (Manchester City) – N/A
The loss of Sterling goals was made up and then some by the arrival of Erling Haaland, though not as a like for like replacement, as Guardiola made do with Julian Alvarez, Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva in support of the Norwegian goal machine to drive City to the treble.
1) Eric Cantona (Manchester United) – Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
The sadness of club hero Cantona retiring on the back driving United to his fifth and final Premier League title with 11 goals and 12 assists in 1996/97 will have been curbed somewhat two years later by his replacements in Barcelona.
