What makes the Premier League a glorious spectacle to watch is goals, goals and more goals. In a league where Goal Difference makes a huge difference compared to other top European leagues, there is no mercy when teams have a field day against opponents.
In such games, we see the strikers make merry as tactics are thrown out the window when opponents pour forward in search of an equaliser or at least a consolation goal. It is no wonder then we see such lopsided scorelines and players grabbing memorable hat-tricks by the time the final whistle blows.
We look at the elite few in England’s top tier have scored a hat-trick at least three times in a single season.
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5) Harry Kane – Tottenham Hotspur
When Harry Kane burst onto the scene in the 2014/15 season, Mauricio Pochettino had seen enough to bench the likes of Roberto Soldado and Emmanuel Adebayor. Here was a striker who was barely in his 20s and he was working hard on the pitch to get into goalscoring positions and finding the back of the net with increasing regularity.
Soldado and Adebayor have since disappeared into footballing ignominy while Kane is setting new records every season. For the third consecutive season, he has scored at least 20 goals in the league that put him among elite company with the likes of Alan Shearer, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Thierry Henry!
With four goals against Leicester City in the penultimate game of the season, Kane put his name into the hat for the Golden Boot heading into the final day. He had previously scored hat-tricks against West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City in 4-0 wins at White Hart Lane.
4) Luis Suarez – Liverpool
When Liverpool signed Luis Suarez from Ajax in the 2011 January transfer window, they got more than they bargained for. With the departure of Fernando Torres, the Reds looked for a capable replacement and found a world class player in the Uruguayan striker who lit up Anfield and almost propelled the club to a first-ever Premier League title.
Controversy dogged his career in England with racism and biting incidents grabbing headlines but there was no doubt about his quality on the pitch. His last two seasons saw him average 30 goals in all competitions (27 in the Premier League).
The 2013/14 season was Suarez’s best at the club as he stormed his way to the Golden Boot with 31 goals despite being suspended at the start of the season – the perfect audition for seeking employment at FC Barcelona. Without European football, Suarez was hungry for goals every weekend and Liverpool almost won the league that year.
He was back from suspension with a vengeance as he grabbed a hat-trick in his first game at Anfield in a 4-1 win over West Brom which was also his first at home for Liverpool. A few weeks later he tormented Norwich City (a club he loved playing against) and grabbed another hat-trick in a 5-1 thrashing. It was his third hat-trick against the same club!
The striker then bagged his third hat-trick in a 6-3 win away at Cardiff City in March 2014. These hat-tricks set him up to break club records for most goals in a Premier League season while he also picked up the PFA Player of the Year and FWA Player of the Year. He would also share the European Golden Boot with Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
3) Dimitar Berbatov – Manchester United
When Manchester United spent £30.75m to sign Dimitar Berbatov, many people were on the fence. Was it too much? But Sir Alex Ferguson knew what he was getting – a striker at his peak. And, of course, Tottenham Hotspur always drove a hard bargain by employing every trick in the book to jack up the price.
Although he took his time to get going at United, the Bulgarian striker was a key figure in the 2010/11 league title triumph with 20 goals in 32 games. And his first hat-trick for the Red Devils came in arguably their biggest fixture of the season – against arch-rivals Liverpool at Old Trafford.
The two English giants met as early as September and Berbatov’s hat-trick in a pulsating game that saw Steven Gerrard equalise twice. But an 84th-minute winner saw United clinch three points and Berbatov’s second goal – an overhead kick he set up himself – was one of the Goals of the Season (unfortunately no match for Wayne Rooney’s winner in the Manchester Derby later that season).
Berbatov then scored five goals in a 7-1 walloping of Blackburn Rovers, thereby becoming the first non-English player to score five in a game. He then grabbed his third hat-trick in a 5-0 win over Birmingham City.
Although he won the Golden Boot (shared with teammate Carlos Tevez), his relationship with the manager took a turn for the worse when he was dropped for the 2011 Champions League final.
2) Ruud van Nistelrooy – Manchester United
With 44 goals to his name in all competitions, the 2002/03 campaign with Manchester United was the finest season of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s career that has seen him play for top clubs such as Real Madrid and PSV Eindhoven. The Dutch striker was unstoppable and at his peak, as he raced away to the Premier League Golden Boot, pipping Arsenal’s Thierry Henry to the award by a solitary goal.
Nistelrooy had a point to prove with Sam Allardyce claiming that season that defenders knew how to stop him in his tracks. How wrong he proved to be.
The Dutchman’s first hat-trick came in a 5-3 win over Newcastle United at Old Trafford scoring in a 15-minute period split by the half-time whistle. At the time, the Red Devils were nowhere in the picture in the title race.
However, by the turn of the year, they were very much in it and another hat-trick against Fulham in a 3-0 win in March saw United pile on the pressure on Arsenal. One of those goals involved a solo run from the centre circle that saw Nistelrooy skip past five defenders and the goalkeeper to score. It was a goal that breathed life into their title aspirations.
In the penultimate game of the season, United were in the driver’s seat and a hat-trick against Charlton Athletic in a 4-1 win made him a strong contender for the Golden Boot – which he duly won on the final day of the season when he converted a penalty against Everton.
1) Alan Shearer – Blackburn Rovers
If Harry Kane spends 10 seasons at Tottenham and plays with the same level of consistency he has shown in the past three seasons, then he has a real chance of getting close to (and even breaking) Alan shearer’s Premier League record of 260 Premier League goals. Even if you took away his penalties, he would have 202 league goals – a record that could stand the test of time.
Foreign players have never hung around long enough to get close to the mark else we may have seen Thierry Henry or Cristiano Ronaldo get close. But Shearer is an English legend who earned his record and deserves plaudits even though he only won the league title once with Blackburn Rovers.
It was at the Lancashire club that he made a name for himself and back in the ‘90s they played 42 games a season instead of 38. In three consecutive seasons at Ewood Park, the former England international averaged 32 league goals a season.
In the 1994/95 season, he scored three hat-tricks – against Queens Park Rangers (4-0 win), West Ham (4-2 win) and Ipswich Town (4-1 win). Remarkably, that wasn’t even his best record as he grabbed five hat-tricks in the 1995/96 season – against Coventry City (5-1 win), Nottingham Forest (7-0 win), West Ham (4-2 win), Bolton Wanderers (3-1 win) and Tottenham Hotspur (3-2 win).
It’s no wonder then that he won the Premier League Golden Boot in three consecutive seasons between 1994/95 and 1996/97 (with Blackburn and Newcastle United).
