James Milner equaled a long-standing Premier League record that many thought would never be matched when he featured for Brighton & Hove Albion in their clash with Aston Villa on Wednesday.
His first-half appearance, entering as a 22nd-minute replacement for injured Brighton teammate Carlos Baleba, was his 653rd appearance in the Premier League, matching a record set by former teammate Gareth Barry.
The pair played alongside one another for 130 of those Premier League outings having spent several seasons with Villa and then with Manchester City. Barry then ended his 22-year professional career in 2020 at the age of 39 — although he came out of retirement last season to play a handful of games for local amateur club Hurstpierpoint, even scoring in a 2-2 draw at Polegate Town in the Mid Sussex Football League.
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Milner’s 24-year playing career in the Premier League is the longest in the competition’s history, and he is still plugging away despite turning 40 last month. He has made 15 league appearances for the Seagulls so far in 2025-26, though the past handful have all consisted of brief cameos as a substitute in the closing stages of games.
The veteran midfielder — who has played in England’s top flight for Leeds United, Newcastle United, Villa, City, Liverpool and Brighton — now just needs one more Premier League appearance to move out in front as the league’s all-time highest appearance maker.
Here are some of the incredible facts and stats that his lengthy — and still active — Premier League career has produced.
Information provided by ESPN Global Soccer Research and Stats Perform.
Total goals: 56
Milner’s first Premier League goal came way back in December 2002 when he found the net with a deft curler in a 2-1 victory for Leeds against Sunderland on Boxing Day, sparking a mass pile-on from his senior teammates. On only his fifth senior appearance, aged just 16 years and 356 days at the time, he became the youngest player to score in the Premier League — a record that stood until 2005 when James Vaughan scored for Everton at the age of 16 years and 271 days.
Best season for goals: 7 (2009-10 & 2016-17)
Milner has hit a personal best of seven league goals on two occasions throughout his career, with the first instance coming during his final full season at Aston Villa in 2009-10. Villa finished sixth and qualified for the Europa League, but Milner’s most crucial goal was probably the winning penalty he scored in the derby against local rivals Birmingham City at Villa Park in April. The midfielder then matched that tally seven seasons later when he scored seven league goals in Jürgen Klopp’s first full season in charge at Liverpool.
Total assists: 90
Milner has chipped in with a steady stream of assists over the years, but perhaps his most significant — at least in terms of trivia — occurred for Brighton in October 2025 when the then-39-year-old assisted Charalambos Kostoulas to become the first player in Premier League history to set up a goal for a teammate who hadn’t yet been born when they made their league debut. Milner made his league debut in November 2002 while Kostoulas was born in May 2007.
Best season for assists: 12 (2009-10)
Milner was at his productive peak in 2009-10 when he married a joint-high goal tally with a career-record 12 league assists for Aston Villa. He even contributed a rare hat trick of assists in a 5-2 win over Burnley in February 2010 by laying on goals for Ashley Young, Stewart Downing and Gabriel Agbonlahor — thus becoming only the second Villa player to achieve the feat in Premier League competition at the time.
Total yellow cards: 80
Total red cards: 3
Fairly disciplined as a rule, Milner has managed to keep his card count relatively low over the course of 24 years playing in the Premier League. However, one of his red cards did provide a moment of mirth when the Liverpool midfielder picked up a second booking against Crystal Palace in January 2019 and was subsequently sent off. It just so happened that Jon Moss, the referee on duty that day, was also once Milner’s PE teacher at Westbrook Lane Primary School in Horsforth.
photo evidence Moss as coach and Milner as captain pic.twitter.com/VhhYlRWvwR
— Foz (@chrisfozard) January 20, 2019
Longest run of consecutive starts: 41 (Oct. 18, 2008 to Oct. 31, 2009)
Renowned for his consistency, Milner managed to go more than a full season without missing out on a place in Aston Villa’s starting XI after signing for the club from Newcastle United on a permanent deal in summer 2008. Indeed, his 41-game run came to an end when he wasn’t included in the squad for a 2-1 defeat against West Ham United in early November 2009 — one of only two games he failed to start for Villa that season.
Longest run of consecutive appearances: 59 (Oct. 22, 2006 to March 8, 2008)
If appearances off the bench are included in the equation, Milner produced a frankly astounding run by featuring in 59 straight Premier League games during his time at Newcastle. However, that is still some way off the overall league record for most consecutive games played by an outfield player, which belongs to former Chelsea star Frank Lampard (164 appearances).
Total minutes played: 38,293
Breaking down his 652 Premier League appearances in terms of sheer time spent on Premier League pitches, Milner has spent a grand total of 38,293 minutes of his life playing top-flight soccer, which is approximately equal to 638 hours or 26.6 days.
Total distance covered in Premier League career: 5.4 million meters
Milner is the perfect embodiment of a midfielder who is willing to cover every blade of grass on a pitch. The data for the distance run by players in the Premier League only goes back to the 2019-20 season, but if we divide Milner’s total ground covered by the number of minutes he has played over the past seven campaigns and then multiply that by the total number of minutes played across his whole Premier League career, then we get a ballpark figure for the total distance he has covered.
By the above calculation, in his Premier League career Milner has covered a whopping 5,414,326 meters, or 3,364 miles. That’s roughly the same distance between New York City and London. That total averages out at 8.29 km (5.15 miles) per match, roughly the same as running from one end of a soccer pitch to the other 80 times.
Number of different teammates he has played with: 295
Number of opposition players he has played against: 2,396
Number of players he has played with and against: 184
It goes without saying that Milner has taken to the field alongside an impressive number of different teammates since making his Premier League debut for Leeds on Nov. 10, 2002. The young winger came on as a substitute for Jason Wilcox — who is now 54 and working as Manchester United‘s director of football. In Milner’s most recent, record-equaling Premier League appearance, he shared the pitch with 17-year-old Harry Howell. A true generation-spanning pro.
Between those two points, Milner has counted Premier League royalty such as Patrick Vieira, Sergio Agüero, Frank Lampard, Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Robert Pires, Michael Owen and Alan Shearer among his teammates. He has also gone up against greats such as Thierry Henry, Steven Gerrard, Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Kane.
There has been a fair bit of overlap too, with well over 150 players playing both with and against Milner in the past. There are also nine players that Milner has been reunited with during his career: the likes of Gareth Barry, Adam Lallana, Mark Viduka and Kolo Touré all finding themselves on the same roster as Milner at two different Premier League clubs.
Number of different managers he has played under: 21
Number of opposition managers he has played against: 158
Number of managers he has played for and against: 12
A three-time Premier League champion, Milner has won the title under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini at Manchester City before triumphing once again under Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool in 2019-20. He made most of his Premier League appearances under Klopp (222), with Mancini next on the list (82) ahead of ex-Villa boss Martin O’Neill (72) and Pellegrini (63).
Indeed, the ludicrously diverse list of managers in the Premier League (two more than anyone else) that Milner has played under in the top flight includes four former England bosses — Sir Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Kevin Keegan, Sam Allardyce — as well as Brendan Rodgers, Graeme Souness and Roberto De Zerbi to name just a selection. Milner is also the only professional player still active to have played under the tutelage of the late, great Robson, who died in 2009.
Milner’s current, Fabian Hürzeler, is seven years and 53 days younger than his most experienced squad member.
Number of players who have debuted in Premier League since Milner’s debut: 3,268
Loads of huge names made their Premier League debuts after Milner made his inaugural bow with a six-minute cameo off the bench in November 2002. Luminaries like Xabi Alonso, Mikel Arteta, Cesc Fàbregas, Vincent Kompany and Robin van Persie have all come and gone since then and begun their careers in management while Milner continues to ply his trade.
Total goals scored in Premier League since Milner’s debut: 24,235
In the time that Milner has been playing, four of the Premier League’s top six goal scorers of all time — Harry Kane (2nd, 213), Wayne Rooney (3rd, 208), Mohamed Salah (4th, 190) and Sergio Agüero (6th, 184) — amassed their entire career hauls in the competition.
Number of teams to play in Premier League since Milner’s debut: 44
With 25 rounds of promotion and relegation taking place since Milner first appeared in the 20-team Premier League, it’s no surprise that he has witnessed an awful lot of turnover in terms of clubs in the top flight. There are the six ever-presents (Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur), yo-yo clubs such as Norwich City, Watford and West Bromwich Albion, and teams like Blackpool and Luton Town, who have spent just one solitary campaign in the Premier League to date.
Number of miles traveled in his Premier League career: 101,584
In a career spanning almost a quarter of a century across six clubs based in different areas of England, it’s no wonder that Milner has clocked up some serious mileage on his travels.
Counting the distance of every round trip from his home stadium at the time to each of the opposition grounds where he played an away game over the course of his Premier League career, Milner has traveled a distance equivalent to more than four times around the globe!
