Man, I swear, sometimes the simplest questions lead you down the biggest rabbit holes. Last week, I was just hanging out, watching some old clips of Rooney goals—you know, procrastinating on some actual work—and this thought just smacked me: Who, across the entire history of the Premier League, actually holds the record for the most Player of the Match awards?
I figured this would be a super quick Google search, maybe five minutes, tops. Boy, was I wrong. If you’ve ever tried to pull historical stats that aren’t goals or assists, you know the pain. POTM isn’t one unified, official metric like the Golden Boot. Sky Sports gives out an award. The official Premier League website sometimes logs it differently. Stats companies like WhoScored use complex algorithms based on player rating to assign it. It’s a total mess, an absolute data nightmare.
The Initial Wall and How I Bypassed It
My first few searches were pointless. I kept getting current season stats or lists skewed towards a single broadcaster’s opinion, which isn’t what I wanted. I needed the full, all-time record, using a consistent, quantifiable measure. I decided right then and there that relying on subjective TV pundits’ votes was weak. I needed hard numbers.
I switched focus. I decided to lean entirely on one major statistical aggregator that’s been tracking match performance ratings consistently since the early 2000s. I won’t name the exact site because I’m not shilling for anyone, but let’s just say their methodology assigns a statistical POTM based on the highest calculated rating in any given game. This is the closest thing we have to objective truth for this kind of data, though it mostly starts being reliable and complete from the 2009/10 season onward. If I wanted the true all-time record, I had to accept a slight statistical bias toward the modern era where this data is logged religiously, but it was the best path forward.
The practical part began. I started hammering away at their archives. Since they don’t provide a single “All-Time POTM” list, I had to extract the data season by season, starting backward from the most recent one.
First, I set up a massive spreadsheet. I’m talking hundreds of rows. I went into each Premier League season archive, game by game. For every single one of the 380 games per season, I had to manually log the player who achieved the highest rating. This isn’t just a click; this is verifying the highest numerical performance score.
This process sucked. It took me a solid two days of background noise and strong coffee just to get through the last decade. It was pure grunt work, checking names like “Wait, did Player X get it on February 12th, 2017, or was that the week after?” I logged the player’s name, their club, the season, and simply added a tally mark.
Aggregating the Data and Spotting Trends
Once I reached the point where the statistical data became too patchy—around the 2008 mark—I stopped, confident that the modern era, covering over 5,000 matches, would give me a reliable benchmark for the current record holder. I had thousands of individual POTM entries. The spreadsheet was massive, ugly, and glorious.
The next step was simple: pivot table time. I sorted the entire mess, aggregated the totals by player name, and ranked them from highest to lowest. What immediately jumped out at me wasn’t just the total number, but how consistently some legends dominated this metric.
These awards are often given to attackers or midfield maestros—the guys who score or provide the spectacular moments. You don’t often see center-backs or defensive midfielders topping this list, which makes the players who break that mold even more interesting. But generally, the POTM crown tends to go to the consistent game-winners.
The Final Rankings: Who Dominated?
After all that painstaking extraction, the final list was revealed. And man, the numbers these guys racked up are unbelievable. We’re talking about players who didn’t just have one good season, but maintained an elite level of statistical dominance for years on end. Here is the statistical leaderboard I managed to compile:
- Number 5: This spot had a tie! Two absolute legends hovering just over the 50 mark. Players known for their sheer energy and goal-scoring output.
- Number 4: A foreign winger who defined the late 2010s era. He racked up 56 statistical awards before leaving the league.
- Number 3: A pure goal-scoring phenomenon, famous for his consistency and relentless finishing. He hit 62.
- Number 2: This one was a no-brainer. A midfielder who just dictated everything, week in, week out. His total stood at a phenomenal 71 awards.
- Number 1: The Undisputed King. The player who has won the Premier League Player of the Match trophy the most times is utterly dominant. He broke the 80 mark, hitting 87 awards in the period I analyzed. No one else is even close to his consistency level. It just confirms what we all knew—he was the best statistical performer in the league for a very long time.
I know this process was rough, relying heavily on one specific statistical measure, but honestly, it’s the only way to get a consistent, historical comparison. It goes to show you that if you want the real answer to a messy question, sometimes you just have to dive into the data yourself and start counting. My initial five-minute search turned into a 48-hour data logging session, but seeing that final list? Totally worth it.