Who Led the Premier League in Blocks Each Season

James Tarkowski made the most blocks in the Premier League in 2025/26: 52 for Everton. That is the answer for the latest completed season, not an all-time soccer record. The Premier League’s season review says he finished top for the fourth time in five seasons. Premier League season review

For the highest total among the four recent seasons compared here, the answer is also Tarkowski: the Premier League’s current statistics table lists 78 blocks in 2022/23. Its contemporary review gave him 76, a discrepancy neither source explains. The competition, season and source version therefore belong alongside any claim about “most blocks in a season.” 2022/23 blocks leaderboard

Choose a season to see its leader, total and any source caveat.

Tarkowski Leads Three Of These Four Seasons

These figures are individual defensive-block totals for Premier League matches only. They do not include cup matches, international appearances or blocks accumulated across a player’s career.

Season	Leading Player	Blocks	Source Version
2022/23	James Tarkowski	78	Current PL table
2023/24	James Tarkowski	56	PL table
2024/25	Nathan Collins	57	PL table
2025/26	James Tarkowski	52	PL season review

The intervening totals come from the Premier League’s 2023/24 leaderboard and 2024/25 leaderboard. The 2022/23 and 2025/26 sources are linked above.

Tarkowski appears as the leader in three of the four seasons shown. Collins leads the other, with 57 in 2024/25. The league’s statement that Tarkowski topped the statistic four times in five seasons covers a longer window than this table; the table itself should not be presented as proof of that full five-season claim.

The highest number displayed is 78, but these rows are a recent-season comparison, not a complete historical search. They establish who led each listed season and which of those leaders had the largest total. They do not establish that no player in an earlier season recorded more.

Likewise, the 2025/26 total of 52 answers who led that season. It does not replace 78 as the highest figure in this comparison simply because it is newer. “Latest season leader” and “highest season total” are different queries, even when the same player supplies both answers.

Tarkowski’s 2022/23 Total Has Two Published Versions

The Premier League’s contemporary 2022/23 review reported 76 blocks for Tarkowski. Its current statistics leaderboard displays 78. Both are published by the league, and neither cited source explains why the figures differ. Contemporary 2022/23 review

For a comparison based on the current leaderboards, use 78 and identify it as the current-table figure. When discussing what the league reported in its original season review, retain 76 and identify that source instead. Silently substituting one for the other makes the evidence harder to follow.

There is no basis in these sources to attribute the difference to a particular match, a later event correction or a changed statistical definition. Those are possible kinds of explanation for changing sports data, but none is established here. The supported statement is narrower: the two publications disagree.

That disagreement does not change the leader named by the two sources. It does change the exact total attached to him. Readers checking an older article against the current table may therefore find a different number without finding a different player.

The comparison above keeps the current-table value rather than blending versions. The tool also exposes the older figure when 2022/23 is selected, so the caveat remains attached to the season where it matters. A precise total is useful only when its provenance stays visible.

A Defensive Block Stops An Attempt On Goal

Under Opta’s definition, a block is an outfield player stopping an opponent’s attempt on goal. If the attempt was going wide, no block is awarded. A blocked pass is a separate event, as are tackles and interceptions. Opta event definitions

A typical example is a centre-back stepping across a forward’s shot and stopping it with his leg before it reaches the goalkeeper. The action belongs to the defender’s block count because he has stopped the attempt on goal. It is not simply a count of every time the ball strikes a defender.

The distinction from blocked passes is particularly useful when reading a defensive dashboard. Cutting out a ball intended for a teammate and stopping an attempt on goal may look similar on a replay, but they describe different attacking actions. Adding them together would produce a broader measure than the blocks statistic used in this comparison.

Tackles and interceptions also cannot be substituted for blocks. They describe other ways of disrupting an attack. A player can help prevent a shot through those actions without earning a defensive block, so the absence of a block does not mean the absence of useful defending.

The direction of the statistic matters too. A table labelled “blocked shots” may count an attacking player’s attempts that defenders stopped. That is not the same leaderboard as a table counting defenders who stopped opponents’ attempts. Before comparing totals across websites, establish whose action each column records.

Goal-Line Interventions Need Separate Interpretation

Opta classifies an attempt stopped by the last defender on the goal line as a shot on target for the attacker, rather than as a blocked shot. That classification appears in the same event-definition source.

The attacker’s shot outcome and the defender’s intervention are related observations, but their labels are not interchangeable. You cannot infer the defender’s statistical category merely by looking for the phrase “blocked shot” in an attacking shot table.

This matters when trying to reconcile a match report with a season leaderboard. A report may describe a defender “blocking” a shot in ordinary football language. The data provider applies a more specific classification. For this article’s totals, the provider’s event definition—not the everyday wording of the report—is the relevant reference.

The Historical Dataset Starts In 2006/07

The Premier League lists blocks among the statistics available from 2006/07 onward, rather than from the competition’s first season in 1992/93. It also identifies Opta as its official performance-data provider. Premier League statistics clarification

That coverage boundary limits the wording of a record claim. A leaderboard drawn from this dataset cannot establish a block total for a season it does not cover. Missing earlier data are not evidence that earlier players made no blocks or could not have recorded a higher total.

Even within the covered period, the four rows above are not a complete ranking. Calling Tarkowski’s 78 an all-time Premier League record would require evidence covering the other eligible seasons, not merely a comparison with the three subsequent leaders.

An all-time soccer claim would be broader still. Premier League figures do not establish the record in other domestic leagues, international competitions or football as a whole. The sourced answer here remains a Premier League season answer.

The most defensible wording is therefore specific: Tarkowski led the Premier League with 52 blocks in 2025/26; his 78 in the current 2022/23 table is the largest total among the four seasons shown. Neither statement needs an unsupported record label to be useful.

A Season Total Measures Volume, Not Defensive Quality

A season block total is a count without a denominator. It does not adjust for minutes played or for how many opportunities a player had to stop shots. Leading the column means recording the most qualifying actions, not necessarily being the best defender.

Playing time is the first distinction. A defender available for more minutes has more time in which to accumulate blocks. Comparing totals without minutes combines the player’s rate of blocking with his opportunity to play.

For a playing-time comparison, blocks per 90 = blocks ÷ minutes played × 90.

This puts players on a common time basis, but the draft’s sources do not provide the minutes needed to calculate comparable rates for these four leaders. No per-90 ranking is supplied here. Dividing by appearances instead would answer a different question because an appearance does not specify how long a player was on the pitch.

A per-90 rate also leaves defensive workload unresolved. A centre-back whose team spends long spells protecting its penalty area can have more chances to block than one whose team prevents opponents from shooting. Equal time on the pitch does not mean equal exposure to attempts.

The match score can alter that exposure. A team defending a lead may retreat and face repeated attempts. Its defender’s block count can increase because the game has moved towards sustained penalty-area defending, without that increase establishing a better overall performance.

The same caution applies to a low total. It might accompany a player who rarely needed to intervene because the team disrupted attacks earlier. The blocks column alone cannot distinguish that situation from a player who failed to stop attempts when opportunities arose.

Read Blocks Alongside The Shots A Team Allows

Minutes played, shots conceded, chance quality and defensive role provide the context needed to interpret a block total. They answer different parts of the problem: how long the player was exposed, how much shooting pressure the team faced, how dangerous the chances were and what the player was asked to defend.

A high count alongside heavy shooting pressure supports a different description from the same count in a team that allowed few attempts. The block figure is unchanged, but its relationship to the surrounding defensive work is not. This is why raw totals should not become a standalone ranking of defensive ability.

Chance quality also prevents every block from being treated as an equivalent test. The event count records that an attempt was stopped; it does not, by itself, tell you how likely that attempt was to become a goal. The sources used here do not supply a chance-quality measure for the leaders’ blocked attempts.

Role belongs in the comparison for the same reason. A centre-back stationed near his own goal faces different blocking situations from a player whose defensive work happens farther up the pitch. Comparing their totals without acknowledging that difference can reward exposure rather than effectiveness.

Blocking a dangerous attempt is valuable. Preventing the attack from reaching a shot can be valuable too, but it leaves no entry in the blocks column. Use the leaderboard to identify the players with the most recorded shot-stopping interventions, then use the surrounding match data to judge what those totals mean.