In depth: Glenn Murray's Albion goalscoring record

Glenn Murray, Albion’s club record post-war goal scorer, called time on a glittering career this week, with the forward appearing more times (285), scoring (111) and assisting (20) more goals for Brighton than at any other club.

He is one of a select few to have scored in all top four English divisions and in three different decades, with his 191 domestic strikes split into 37 Premier League, 69 Championship, 54 League One and 31 League Two goals.

The Maryport-born marksman is still Albion’s top Premier League scorer (26 goals) since promotion in 2017, and since the start of Brighton’s inaugural Premier League season only Peter Crouch has assisted a goal when aged older than Murray.

Murray is also the scorer of the oldest Premier League goal in history, when he and Bruno combined for Murray’s 100th Albion strike against Wolves – together, the duo were aged 73 years and 57 days. In Brighton’s first two Premier League seasons, Murray netted 36% (25 out of 69) of Albion's goals, the highest proportion of any player in the history of the competition.

Murray is one of just 16 players to have netted three or more Championship hat-tricks, with his most recent coming for the Albion in the 5-0 demolition at home to Norwich in 2016.

His minutes per goal average of 173 in the English second tier is among the top 11 players in the history of the competition, with only Brentford's Ivan Toney (31 goals – 2020/21 season) having netted more than Murray (30 goals – 2012/13 season) in a single Championship campaign.

Murray has netted 34 match-winning goals for Albion in total, including seven in the 2016/17 promotion season and then six more (all competitions) during the following campaign, meaning almost half of his goals (6/13) in the 2017/18 season were match winners.

His four match-winning goals that season remains the highest of any Brighton player in a single Premier League campaign, whilst Murray (2017/18 and 2018/19) is the only Albion player so far to record back-to-back ten-plus goal seasons in the Premier League.

Pascal Gross assisted Murray on four occasions in the 2017/18 season, meaning almost a third of the Englishman’s goals were laid on by the German, and exactly half of the his assists were to Murray – only six different scorer-assister combinations yielded more goals in the Premier League that season, with Gross assisting Murray the second best combination of any non big-six club (after Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez assisting Jamie Vardy for seven goals).

Brighton boasted a 67% win rate when Murray has scored in games (all competitions, all seasons) and they have lost on just nine occasions in the 88 matches when he has scored. When Brighton drew against Aston Villa at the Amex in February 2017, they were unbeaten in 12 consecutive Glenn Murray-scoring games.

Albion’s record post-war scorer has successfully converted 17 of his 22 penalties taken in the blue and white, giving him an above average conversion rate of 77% from spot kicks. The penalty area was Murray’s prime hunting ground, with all 26 of his Brighton Premier League strikes being scored inside the 18-yard-box from 113 shots, giving him a conversion rate of over 23% in this area of the pitch.

As a Premier League player, Murray found was most productive against West Ham United, netting a red-hot seven goals in 10 appearances against the Irons, with Albion winning half of those fixtures. Across all competitions, Albion’s no.17 has recorded more goal involvements against Wycombe (9 – in just five games) than against any other club, which included a four-goal haul in December 2009 at Adams Park.

The range in Murray’s finishing can be demonstrated best through Transfermarkt data. Since the start of the 2016/17 season he has scored 23 right-footed goals, 12 penalties, 10 left-footed goals and nine headers.