Watch: Manchester City Winger Raheem Sterling Surpasses Cristiano Ronaldo In A Premier League Feat

Raheem Sterling scored a brace in Manchester City’s 4-0 win over Watford and surpassed Cristiano Ronaldo in a Premier League feat Tuesday, July 21.

After the Watford fixture, Sterling now has scored 85 goals in the English top-flight league, one more than Ronaldo, who scored 84 during his stint with Manchester United between 2003 and 2009.

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner, who moved from Sporting Lisbon to Old Trafford ahead of the 2003-04 season, made 196 appearances in the Premier League. He scored 29 goals in his debut Premier League season before he went on to score 30+ goals in each of the following seasons till 2009 when he moved to La Liga’s Real Madrid.

Meanwhile, Sterling — who moved from Liverpool to Man City in 2015 — has massively improved for the four-time champions over the years. His first season with the Etihad side saw him net six goals in the Premier League, with seven, 18 and 17 goals in the next three campaigns. The ongoing 2019-20 campaign has been his best-ever run in the Premier League as he has netted 19 goals and still has a match to go before the season ends.

Having scored 19 goals in the league in the ongoing campaign, Sterling is on par with Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah and they are together in the fourth position in the list of top scorers behind leader Jamie Vardy of Leicester City (23), Southampton’s Danny Ings (21) and Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (20). Next on the list are a bunch of players who have all scored 17 goals each so far in the current Premier League edition: Liverpool’s Sadio Mane, Tottenham’s Harry Kane, Wolves’ Raúl Jiménez and Manchester United duo of Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford.

Despite being a winger and not a forward, Sterling has been among the stars who have been goal-scoring threats from outside the forward line.

According to a report in Goal, only five non-strikers in the history of the English league have managed to score more than Sterling, who now shares the sixth place in the list with former Chelsea player Eden Hazard, who also netted 85 goals during his stay in the Premier League between 2012 and 2019.

The duo is just behind Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier, who scored 100 Premier League goals — a record that goes up to 160 when taking into account his strikes in the First Division prior to the maiden Premier League campaign in 1992-93.

Next is Man Utd great Paul Scholes, who netted 107 goals for the Red Devils and had struck a great bond with long-time Reds team-mate Ryan Giggs, who is ahead in the list with 109 strikes in his account.

The player, who is at the top of the list, former Chelsea and their current manager Frank Lampard, who netted 177 Premier League ahead of then-rival Steven Gerrard, who had 120 strikes for Liverpool.