Sadio Mane reaches 100 goals landmark in Premier League without a single penalty

Sadio Mane has reached 100 Premier League goals, with the Liverpool star achieving a rare feat by hitting the milestone without any penalties in his tally.

Mane coolly finished from Mohamed Salah’s pass early in Saturday’s match at Watford to bring up the milestone.

The Senegal forward netted his first back in October 2014 as he scored the winner for Southampton in a 1-0 victory over Stoke City.

He went on to score another nine that season and followed up with 11 in 2015-16, his impressive and swift adaptation to the Premier League persuading Liverpool to spend a reported £34million on him.

While some may have had their doubts initially, Mane again settled quickly and went on to score 13 times from 27 league appearances in his first campaign.

He has reached double figures for goals in each of his previous five full Premier League seasons with the Reds, with 2018-19 undoubtedly his best.

Mane plundered a career-high 22 goals, the clinical nature of his finishing highlighted by the fact he outperformed his expected goals (xG) by 6.9. Only Lionel Messi (12), Paco Alcacer (8.4) and Iago Aspas (8.1) boasted better records than Mane across the top five European leagues that season.

Even last season when he came in for a little more criticism than usual and failed to match his xG figure of 14.2, Mane still added 11 goals.

And he is seemingly well on track to make it eight successive seasons with at least 10 Premier League goals, with his effort against Watford taking him to five from just eight matches in 2021-22.

What makes Mane’s goalscoring achievements at Liverpool even more impressive is the fact none of his 100 have come via penalties.

He is the 31st player to score at least 100 goals in the Premier League, but only the third to reach that landmark without any coming from the spot, joining Les Ferdinand (149) and Emile Heskey (110) in an exclusive club.

Mane is also the third African player to that mark, after Didier Drogba and team-mate Salah.