The Staggering Stats You (Didn't Realise You) Need to Know About James Milner's Premier League Career

James Milner’s next appearance will draw him level with Gareth Barry for the most games played in Premier League history (653). We mark him reaching such an impressive landmark by looking back at the astonishing stats surrounding his career so far.

10 November 2002. A date that is closer to the 1970s than it is to today.

In that evening’s episode of Coronation Street, Richard Hillman continued to wreak havoc on the Platt family, still two months away from driving them all into the Weatherfield Canal. The second episode of the fourteenth season of The Simpsons aired for the first time. On BBC One, the lads from Top Gear reviewed the cars from the new James Bond film, Die Another Day, the last featuring Pierce Brosnan in the lead role, released 10 days later.

In the Premier League, Howard Wilkinson – then as he is now, the last Englishman to win the English top-flight title – and his Sunderland side won 2-0 against Tottenham, while Leeds were victorious in a seven-goal thriller, winning 4-3 away at West Ham.

In the 84th minute of that match, a 16-year-old James Milner became – at the time – the fourth youngest Premier League player in history when he was substituted on for Jason Wilcox.

That same afternoon, ‘Unbreakable’ by Westlife went to number one in the UK singles chart. It only lasted one week in the top spot, but 1,212 weeks on from that afternoon at Upton Park, Milner himself remains unbreakable. This weekend, he could equal Gareth Barry’s record for the most Premier League appearances (653) when Brighton & Hove Albion play Crystal Palace on Sunday afternoon.

Here is a look at some of the lesser-known facts of Milner’s Premier League career, and his wider place in its history so far.

The Debut

Aside from Milner, November 2002 was not a vintage month of Premier League debuts. Seven other players made their bow in the top flight of English football that month, and six of them didn’t even make it to 25 appearances.

In the case of Lee Roche, who came on as a substitute for Manchester United against Newcastle on 23 November, it was his one and only appearance in the Premier League, a 21-minute cameo. Only Kieran Richardson – also debuting against Newcastle for Man Utd – made a dent in the appearance charts, playing 265 times overall in the Premier League.

Milner was not the only player to make his Premier League debut on 10 November. The first of Michael Proctor’s 21 games in the top flight was on that date, starting Sunderland’s win over Tottenham Hotspur. Proctor may not have made quite the same impact that Milner has, longevity-wise at least, but he does have a place in Premier League history. He is one of only six players to score two own goals in a game, doing so in February 2003 against Charlton.

Although Milner has played 631 more games in the competition, Proctor scored more own goals in the space of four first-half minutes against the Addicks than Milner has in his entire top-flight career – Milner’s one and only own goal was in March 2010, for Aston Villa against Wolves.

Milner’s debut meant he became Leeds’ youngest ever top-flight player, aged only 16 years and 310 days, breaking Neil Aspin’s record by four days, set in 1982. This record was later broken by Aaron Lennon, who debuted the following season aged only 16 years and 129 days.

Lennon is also one of four players who have played while aged 16 in a Premier League game that also featured Milner – Reece Oxford (August 2015 for West Ham vs Liverpool), Harvey Elliott (January 2020 for Liverpool vs Sheffield United) and Sam Amo-Ameyaw in May 2023 for Southampton vs Liverpool are the other three.

Also featuring in Milner’s debut game was Nigel Winterburn for West Ham. Winterburn was born in 1963 and made his own top-flight debut the same year Milner was born, when he played for Wimbledon against Manchester City on the opening day of the 1986-87 campaign. West Ham’s 4-3 loss to Leeds in November 2002 was the 552nd top-flight appearance of Winterburn’s career – he made another 12 in 2002-03 before his retirement on 564 top-flight games.

Winterburn played against Peter Shilton in the old First Division – Shilton made his own league debut just before the 1966 World Cup for Leicester – and then against Milner as he made his bow, meaning that Winterburn has extraordinarily come up against players who have played in the English top-flight sixty seasons apart.

Of course, Milner remains the last man standing from his Premier League debut game – the most recent appearance in the competition that another player from that match made was by Jermain Defoe in November 2018 for Bournemouth, and before him was Michael Carrick on the final day of 2017-18.

Of his Leeds teammates that day, goalkeeper Paul Robinson made his final appearance in March 2017 for Burnley, while of the outfielders, the most recent Premier League appearance came from Ian Harte in April 2013.

Avoiding Nathan Collins

Just over 5,000 players have played in the Premier League since it was formed in 1992-93 (5,094). Of those, 49% have played in a game either alongside or against Milner – and 4,000 games had already been played by the time Milner debuted in November 2002.

Across history, 4.4% of Premier League debuts have come in a game that featured Milner played in. There are only five players who’ve made at least 300 Premier League appearances and never once crossed paths with Milner in the competition.

Gary McAllister (325) and Lee Dixon (305) played their last games on the final day of the 2001-02 season. Peter Atherton (318) – who holds the Premier League record for appearances during the 1990s – departed the top flight in early 2001.

Martin Keown (323 games) played in the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons but while he played the full 90 minutes in May 2003 in a 3-2 defeat to Leeds, Milner was left on the bench by Peter Reid that day. Milner featured in Arsenal’s 5-0 win over Leeds in April 2004, but Keown was an unused substitute before leaving the Gunners at the end of the season.

The last of the five who went without facing Milner was diminutive full-back Alan Wright (305), who played six games after Milner’s debut between 2003 and 2006, and none saw him feature against Milner. They shared two of the same clubs in their careers (Aston Villa and Leeds), but never the same pitch.

Looking at it from the slightly fairer standpoint of players to play significantly since the season Milner debuted in 2002-03, there is one outlier.

Aside from Milner himself, 876 other players have played at least 100 games in the last 24 Premier League seasons, and Milner has played with or against 99.9% of them. The only one he hasn’t is current Brentford defender Nathan Collins, whose 139 appearances in the competition have so far avoided Milner.

It’s been close, though – Milner has played in three Premier League matches with Collins on the bench for the opponents, but none of those three occasions saw Collins get the call to come on. They all came while Milner was at Liverpool: versus Burnley in February 2022 and against Wolves in February and March 2023.

Brighton face Brentford on 21 February though, so Collins and Milner might finally cross paths.

The Milner Connection

The most recent day in Premier League history that did not feature a single player who has played in the same game as Milner at some stage was 20 March 1995.

There’s been 3,254 days of Premier League action since then, and on every single one there has been at least one player who has crossed paths with Milner.

On the final day of 2022-23, 285 of the 300 players who featured had played for or against Milner at some stage, a record for a single day of Premier League action. Even more impressive is the opening day of the 2007-08 season, with 190 out of the 190 players who played that day having played with or against Milner in the competition. The true peak of Milner-mania.

In fact, only 10 days of Premier League football (0.28%) have not featured a player who has played in the same match as Milner, and since 2002-03 there’s only been one day where the percentage of players that day dipped below 50% – 14 of the 29 players featuring in Aston Villa’s 1-1 draw with Sheffield United in December 2023 had done (48%).

Even going back to the first ever weekend of Premier League football in 1992-93, there were 28 players who featured and would later come across Milner in a Premier League match, including two who went on to be teammates.

David Batty played nine times with Milner at Leeds in 2003-04 and both were in the starting XI when Batty played for the final time in January 2004 in a 1-0 defeat to Newcastle. The scorer of the only goal that day, Alan Shearer, was the other player from the opening weekend to later share a dressing room with Milner. They played alongside each other 21 times for the Magpies.

Going back to include the old First Division (before 1992-93), it’s an astonishing fact that at least one player who has played for or against Milner in a top-flight match has featured in every top-flight season since 1985-86. David Seaman was the lone player that season and he faced Milner in the 603rd of his 607 top-flight games, in December 2003 for Man City.

The Managers

Including caretakers, Milner has made a Premier League appearance under 21 different managers – two more than any other player.

Milner has seen managers from both ends of the age spectrum. He’s played under the Premier League manager born longest ago – Bobby Robson, born in February 1933 – and the one born most recently, with his current boss Fabian Hürzeler born sixty years after Robson in February 1993. In fact, Hürzeler is the only manager to be born after the first ever Premier League games in 1992 and to have taken charge of a game in the competition.

Robson gave three appearances to Milner in 2004-05 for Newcastle before he was sacked. Milner was born 52 years and 320 days after Robson, the second biggest gap between a player who made a Premier League appearance under him – there were 19 more days in age between him and Steven Taylor. Only a handful of players, all of whom played under Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace and Watford, have had a bigger gap with their manager than Taylor and Milner under Robson.

Biggest Age Gaps Between Player and Manager in Premier League History

David Ozoh under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 57 years, 270 days

Matheus França under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 56 years, 236 days

Adam Wharton under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 56 years, 181 days

Jesurun Rak-Sakyi under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 55 years, 57 days

Naouirou Ahamada under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 54 years, 232 days

Michael Olise under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 54 years, 125 days

Brandon Pierrick under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 54 years, 123 days

João Pedro under Roy Hodgson (Watford) – 54 years, 48 days

Jeremy Ngakia under Roy Hodgson (Watford) – 53 years, 29 days

Steven Taylor under Bobby Robson (Newcastle) – 52 years, 339 days

Marc Guéhi under Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace) – 52 years, 339 days

James Milner under Bobby Robson (Newcastle United) – 52 years, 320 days

Milner’s continued presence in the Premier League has maintained one particularly crazy stat: at least one player to play under Robson in the English top flight has made an appearance in every single season since 1957-58.

Robson managed his first game in the top flight in January 1968 – a 5-0 defeat to Fulham with Leeds. In that game, Mark Pearson made his one and only top-flight appearance under him, and he debuted in February 1958 for Man Utd. As well as Pearson (who played in each season from 1957-58 to 1967-68), there was Ray Crawford who featured under Robson in 1969 when he’d moved to Ipswich. Crawford scored eight top-flight goals in 1957-58 for Portsmouth and later won the title with the Tractor Boys under Alf Ramsey.

Featuring for Leeds in that aforementioned 1968 meeting with Fulham was a 19-year-old Eddie Gray, whose links to Leeds are legendary. He played 579 games for the club, then managed them between 1982 and 1985 before returning as a coach in the era when the Whites reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup and UEFA Champions League in consecutive seasons at the turn of the Millennium.

In 2003-04, with the club struggling near the foot of the Premier League, Gray returned to manage the team – which included a teenage Milner. He featured in all 25 Premier League matches under Gray that season, meaning that of the 21 managers Milner has played for, Gray is the only one that Milner ranks outright first for appearances under.

Milner has played under Premier League managers born in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, but oddly not the 1980s. Jumping from appearing under Roberto De Zerbi (b. June 1979) for Brighton in 2023-24, Milner has played 18 games under Fabian Hürzeler since the start of 2024-25 – a manager who is seven years Milner’s junior, born in 1993.

It is the biggest gap in age for a player being older than their manager in Premier League history, with Alec Chamberlain under Aidy Boothroyd the previous biggest gap at six years and 233 days, and that was just for a last-minute appearance on the final day of 2006-07 for Watford.

Player Older than Manager: Biggest Age Gap in Premier League History

James Milner under Fabian Hürzeler (Brighton and Hove Albion) – 7 years, 53 days

Alec Chamberlain under Aidy Boothroyd (Watford) – 6 years, 233 days

Brad Friedel under André Villas-Boas (Tottenham Hotspur) – 6 years, 152 days

Neville Southall under Paul Jewell (Bradford City) – 6 years, 12 days

Hugo Lloris under Ryan Mason (Tottenham Hotspur) – 4 years, 169 days

Fraser Forster under Ryan Mason (Tottenham Hotspur) – 3 years, 88 days

Neville Southall under Dave Watson (Everton) – 3 years, 65 days

Dave Beasant under Micky Adams (Nottingham Forest) – 2 years, 233 days

Jason Steele under Fabian Hürzeler (Brighton and Hove Albion) – 2 years, 192 days

Ivan Perisic under Ryan Mason (Tottenham Hotspur) – 2 years, 131 days

A quick scan of the list – and a good knowledge of goalkeepers to play in the Premier League across the 1990s – and you will notice that of the top 10, only two are outfield players. Aside from Milner’s seniority over Hürzeler, there is only Ivan Perisic under Ryan Mason making the list, and their gap was ‘only’ two years and 131 days.

Milner’s Teammates

Milner has played alongside almost 300 teammates in his Premier League career. At least one teammate has made their debut in every single season in the competition; as you’d expect, those from the early years of the Premier League – who were still playing long enough to play with Milner – are well known: Shearer, Batty, Wilcox, Barmby, Butt in 1992-93. Radebe and Heskey in 1994-95. Bowyer, Vieira, Given, Owen, Duff in 1996-97. All big hitters.

Here’s a list of every single player to appear for the same team as Milner in a match that he also played in:

Others made their Premier League debuts alongside Milner and never played again – Cyril Chapuis, in a November 2003 defeat to Bolton with Leeds, played a grand total of 45 minutes. Reece Wabara came off the bench alongside Milner on the final day of 2010-11 for Man City – also against Bolton – and then never played again. Jordan Rossiter’s sole 14 minutes of Premier League football came in August 2015 in a goalless draw for Liverpool against Arsenal at the Emirates.

Others came close to playing with Milner but didn’t quite manage it – Karim Rekik came on for Milner in his one and only appearance in December 2012 during Man City’s 1-0 win over Reading, with the winning goal scored by Gareth Barry. Then, in January 2019, Rafael Camacho’s only Premier League game for Liverpool was as a 94th-minute sub around five minutes after Milner had been sent off in a 4-3 win over Crystal Palace. Like ships that pass in the night… although Camacho didn’t make a pass while he was on the pitch.

Returning to Barry for a moment – he is one of only two players to have started at least 100 Premier League games alongside Milner (exactly 100), along with Roberto Firmino (102 at Liverpool). Barry played at two different teams with Milner (Aston Villa and Man City), one of nine players to do so alongside Lee Bowyer, Eirik Bakke, Alan Smith, Aaron Hughes, Mark Viduka, Habib Beye, Kolo Touré and Adam Lallana.

It’s no great surprise that the birth dates of Milner’s teammates have spanned a huge amount of time – he’s started a Premier League match alongside players born in every single year from 1968 (Pavel Srníček, Batty) through to 2007 (Charalampos Kostoulas). So far, 2005 (Jack Hinshelwood), 2006 (Stefanos Tzimas) and 2007 (Kostoulas) have all provided just one player, the fewest since 1970 – which only had Shearer born then.

Of the 281 players Milner has started a game alongside, 14 were born after he made his Premier League debut in November 2002. The first two of those were at Liverpool: Harvey Elliott in January 2020 (born April 2003), followed by Stefan Bajcetic in January 2023 (born October 2004). Since then, the next 12 have all been Brighton players.

The starkest example is that of Greek international Kostoulas – Milner had already played 138 Premier League games by the time he was born in May 2007.

Grabbing Goals

Milner has never been a prolific scorer of Premier League goals – 56 in his career, with seven his highest tallies in a season in both 2009-10 and 2016-17. But his goalscoring does have historical significance.

His goal against Sunderland on Boxing Day 2002 made him the Premier League’s youngest ever scorer, aged 16 years and 356 days. That strike broke Wayne Rooney’s record by four days, which Rooney had only just set two months previously. Milner’s record was eventually beaten by James Vaughan in April 2005 (aged 16 years, 270 days) and he still sits second in the list of youngest ever scorers.

He’s also in second place on the list of oldest scorers – his penalty for Brighton against former side Man City when aged 39 years and 239 days put him behind Teddy Sheringham, whose final goal in the top flight was netted in December 2006 for West Ham versus Portsmouth aged 40 years and 268 days. It did, however, make him the oldest penalty scorer – a record he took from Sheringham, beating him by 92 days.

Milner’s goal against City was scored past James Trafford, who was born on 10 October 2002 – exactly one month before Milner made his Premier League debut. It means that Milner has scored a Premier League goal against goalkeepers born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the only player to achieve this feat.

He isn’t the only player to score against goalkeepers from five different decades, however – Damien Duff and Frank Lampard both scored against goalkeepers born from the 1950s through to the 1990s. The goalkeepers that Milner scored against who were born in the 1960s were Nigel Martyn, Ed de Goey and Paul Jones.

His penalty past Trafford was against a goalkeeper 16 years and 279 days his junior, the second-biggest gap between a scorer and a goalkeeper in Premier League history. Again, Sheringham’s longevity and goalscoring nous put him at the top, teaching Kevin Stuhr-Ellegaard a lesson in January 2004 for Portsmouth against Man City – he was 17 years older than the Danish goalkeeper.

Biggest Age Gap Between Goalscorer and Goalkeeper in Premier League History

Teddy Sheringham vs Kevin Stuhr-Ellegaard (Portsmouth vs Man City, Jan 2004) – 17 years, 51 days.

James Milner vs James Trafford (Brighton vs Man City, Aug 2025) – 16 years, 279 days.

Kevin Moran vs Paul Gerrard (Blackburn vs Oldham, Aug 1993) – 16 years, 268 days.

Gary McAllister vs Chris Kirkland (Liverpool vs Coventry, Nov 2000/Apr 2001) – 16 years, 128 days.

Jamie Vardy vs Antonín Kinsky (Leicester vs Tottenham, Jan 2025) – 16 years, 61 days.

Milner has scored in 55 different Premier League matches, only once scoring a brace in a match, in September 2016 against Hull City for Liverpool in a 5-1 win. He remains unbeaten when he has found the net, winning 44 and drawing 11 – only Gabriel Jesus has ever scored in more Premier League games without losing.

It’s unlikely Milner will break the all-time Premier League record for the oldest player, set by 43-year-old goalkeeper John Burridge in 1995. But the record for an outfield player is much nearer and within his sights: Sheringham at 40 years and 272 days old.

Milner would need to make a top-flight appearance on or after 4 October this year to go beyond Sheringham’s age that day, and you certainly wouldn’t bet against Milner achieving it. Long may he continue to break records.

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