Kelechi Iheanacho: Five English records held by Super Eagles striker

Super Eagles striker Kelechi Iheanacho joined Turkish Süper Lig side Bursaspor on a free transfer earlier this summer after a season with Celtic, Afrik-Foot reports.

The 29-year-old forward moved to Manchester City on his 18th birthday in 2014, spent seven years at Leicester City between 2017 and 2024 and closed his English chapter with a brief Championship loan spell at Middlesbrough in the second half of the 2024/25 season, before Sevilla, Celtic and now Bursaspor took his career elsewhere.

Along the way, he won the 2020/21 FA Cup and 2021 Community Shield with Leicester, the 2023/24 Championship title with the Foxes, and last season the Scottish Premiership and Scottish Cup double with Celtic.

His most significant statistical fingerprints, however, remain on English football. Here are five records in English football still held by the Owerri-born striker.

Five English records held by Kelechi Iheanacho

1. Best goals-per-minute ratio in a single Premier League season (2015/16)

The first of Iheanacho’s English records was set almost as soon as he arrived. As a 19-year-old rookie back-up to Sergio Agüero at Manchester City, he ended the 2015/16 Premier League campaign with the division’s best goals-per-minute ratio, scoring eight league goals despite starting only 11 top-flight matches.

He also scored an FA Cup hat-trick against Aston Villa that season and appeared in City’s Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid, finishing the campaign with 14 goals in all competitions.

2. First Premier League player to score on every day of the week in a single season

Five and a half years later, Iheanacho added a Premier League-wide first. The Nigerian’s 76th-minute finish for Leicester City in their 2-1 defeat at Chelsea on Tuesday 18 May 2021, converted from a Wilfred Ndidi assist at Stamford Bridge, made him the first player in Premier League history to score in the same season on all seven days of the week.

That 2020/21 campaign was his career peak in England, with 12 Premier League goals in 15 starts and the Premier League Player of the Month award for March 2021.

3. First “fourth substitute” in FA Cup history

Iheanacho is a footnote in English football’s rulebook too. When the Football Association introduced the option of a fourth substitute in extra time of knockout ties for the 2016/17 season, the Manchester City striker was the first player anywhere in the FA Cup to be used under the new rule.

He replaced Raheem Sterling before the start of the extra-time second half in City’s 2-1 semi-final defeat to Arsenal at Wembley.

4. First player in English football to have a goal awarded by VAR

His name is also the first entered in English football’s video assistant referee ledger.

During Leicester City’s FA Cup third-round replay against Fleetwood Town on 16 January 2018, Iheanacho was ruled offside by referee Jon Moss after turning in what appeared to be his side’s second goal.

Video assistant Mike Jones reviewed the call for 67 seconds, found the Nigerian to be onside and awarded the goal, the first time in English football that VAR had overturned an on-field decision to award a goal.

5. Highest-scoring African player in FA Cup history (18 goals)

Iheanacho’s biggest English record, and the one most likely to survive the longest, is his position at the top of the FA Cup’s all-time African scoring charts.

Across 24 appearances in the competition with Manchester City and Leicester City, he scored 18 goals, well clear of second-placed Didier Drogba, whose 12 goals in 29 FA Cup games for Chelsea now sit two places behind him.