England's Highest Goals-For Matches by Decades

* Omits Match No. 709, 15 February 1995,  abandoned because of crowd violence after 27 minutes with the Republic of Ireland leading 1-0, because, although caps were awarded, no official result was reached.

Notes

The table shows England have scored five goals or more in 102 matches--roughly once every eight matches they have played.  That ratio is continually declining as England play on for several reasons:  England long ago lost the supremacy in international football they enjoyed before the Second World War as their opponents became much stronger and brought dynamic styles of play, innovative tactical systems and higher levels of technical ability to the game; the frequency of high-scoring matches has decreased sharply in recent decades with the ascendancy of defence-oriented tactics; and, finally, England now play against a much wider variety of opponents and in many more competitive matches..  

Of the 101 five-goals-or more matches, 50--a little more than half--came in the 226 matches England played before the Second World War, a ratio of roughly once every four or five matches.  In the post-war era, England have scored five or more goals on another 49 occasions in 572 more matches at this writing,  which produces a ratio of about once every 11 or 12 matches.  It took post-war England about two and a half times the number of matches pre-war England played to score five or more goals almost as many times as pre-war England did.  

Moreover, since the beginning of the 1980-81 season, about the time defence-oriented tactics put a universal lock on the game, England have scored five or more goals on only 13 occasions in 270 matches at this writing, a ratio of once every 21 matches.  Over the past two decades, England's goal binges have come against teams that were extremely weak at the time--Luxembourg, Turkey, San Marino, Finland, Albania, Greece and Iceland--with a single exception, the astonishing 5-1 World Cup qualifying victory against Germany in Munich on 1 September 2001.  While Germany no longer were the formidable power they had been since the 1970's, they certainly were not a pushover.  But everything went right for England that day, a lot went wrong for Germany, and the result stands as a highly unusual blip in the general trend towards close, low-scoring matches.  

In the matches England have played since their 5-0 trouncing of Greece on 17 May 1994, they have scored five or more goals only four times--six against Luxembourg in the 1999 European Championship qualifier at Wembley, five against Germany in the World Cup 2002 qualifier, six against Iceland in the FA Summer Tournament in Manchester in 2004, and another six against Jamaica in Manchester in 2006.  Because even the weakest national sides are making vast improvements in their game, we will probably see England score five or more goals only once or twice every decade in the new century.

The tables above--and many others on this website--are thus set forth only for the sake of preserving England's record.  They are of historical interest only.  

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