“During my afternoon coffee break Wiki-crawl, I came across the career statistics of Robbie Earle,” mails Joe Ward. “Port Vale: 294 appearances and 77 goals; Wimbledon: 284 appearances and 59 goals. Now, it’s not a million miles away that his record for both clubs would be the same. Has anyone got anything close to identical – and significant – statistics for clubs in their career?”
It would be particularly weird if any player had identical records – we haven’t found one yet, although the challenge is still there for any readers with enough time on their hands. There are players with eerily similar records, mind.
Here’s Lee Wall: “Peter Beardsley scored 46 goals in 131 games for Liverpool (0.35 goals per game). He then went for a second spell at Newcastle and scored 47 goals in 129 games (0.36). Lee Chapman scored 63 goals in 149 games at Sheffield Wednesday (0.42) then 62 goals in 139 games at Leeds (0.44). John Hartson scored 11 goals in 54 games for Luton (0.20), 14 goals in 54 games for Arsenal (0.26) and 14 goals in 51 games for Wales (0.27).”
Lee then points us in the direction of a couple of former Spurs strikers. “Jürgen Klinsmann scored 29 in 65 for Monaco (0.44), 31 in 65 for Bayern (0.47) and 30 in 59 for Spurs (0.50). Chris Armstrong scored 13 goals in 60 games for Wrexham (0.22) between 1989 and 1991, he then went back to Wrexham between 2003 and 2005 and scored 13 goals in 59 games (0.22).”
“While not an exact match, Steven Naismith scored 29 goals in 102 appearances for Kilmarnock and 28 goals in 98 appearances for Rangers (both a 0.28 return),” writes Simon Barr. “Another close but not exact match: Roy Makaay scored 79 in 133 for Deportivo la Coruña (0.59) and 78 in 129 for Bayern Munich (0.60). Finally, Luis Suárez played 27 for Nacional and 29 for Groningen returning 10 for each (0.27 and 0.29). He played 110 for both Ajax and Liverpool, returning 81 and 69 (0.73 and 0.62).”
Jack Cummins flags up Niall Quinn as a model of consistency in front of goal. “Quinn notched 66 goals in 204 league appearances for Manchester City (0.32), and 61 in 203 league appearances for Sunderland (0.30). And, while this may be slightly bending the rules, the ever-young Jermain Defoe scored 43 Premier League goals in 139 appearances after moving to Tottenham in 2004 (0.31), before bagging 47 in 135 appearances during his second period with the club (0.35).”
And here’s Kevin Baron, who has been busy crunching the current Scunthorpe United manager’s career goalscoring stats. “I present to you the spookily close goals per game figures of a one Graham Alexander. To one decimal place the averages are all 0.1 per game, with the exception of his time at Preston (0.2 per game). Joe’s query, while not necessarily about the averages themselves, but more to do with the near-identical nature of numerator and denominator can be applied in this case as the following table showing Alexander’s senior career appearances can confirm.
“His time spent at Scunthorpe, Luton and Burnley shows very similar figures (which the averages then agree). I hope this quality find can be accepted as a worthwhile answer, and I thank Mr Ward greatly in allowing me to use up incredible amounts of work time while browsing the internet instead of ‘analysing data’.”
Alexander, a penalty master in his playing days, slotted home 78 penalties across his 17-year career in all competitions, with 65 of those coming in league competitions. Some brief number-crunching tells us that 60.74% of Alexander’s league goals (107 in total) came from 12 yards. He found the net in his final game too – for Preston in 2012 – scoring a 90th-minute equaliser at home to Charlton, from open play this time. Might his record from the penalty spot explain his goalscoring consistency?
Non-league European football heroes (II)
“Further to your piece about Welsh non-league clubs starring in Europe – somehow you forgot Borough United,” exclaims William Hogg.
“They were founded in 1952 from the amalgamation of two other clubs and played out of Llandudno Junction. They won the Welsh Cup in 1963 and were in the Welsh League North (which featured Rhyl’s reserve side, so that would be at least tier six in the pyramid) when they played first Sliema Wanderers of Malta (won 2-0 over two legs) and then Slovan Bratislava of what was then Czechoslovakia (lost 0-4 over two legs). That match against Sliema was in fact the first time a Welsh club had won in Europe. They played both home matches at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground, their own ground having been deemed unsuitable for European football. Sadly Borough United are no more. In 1967 they were evicted from their ground by the Irish religious order who owned it and then kicked around local Welsh football before finally folding in 1969.”
Goalposts or nets on club badges
“After a random work conversation led to deconstructing the old v new Sheffield Wednesday club badges, we got on to the subject of how there seem to be lots of club badges with footballs, but none with goals, goalposts or nets,” writes Michael Pilcher. “As the ultimate aim of the beautiful game is to stick the ball in the goal as often as possible, it seems strange these aren’t reflected more. Our Google work yielded no success – can anyone provide examples of club badges with depictions of goals?”
“I’ll probably not be the only one to email with this example, but Aberdeen FC’s badge from 1979 onwards consisted pretty much of nothing but a side-on image of a goal,” responds Derek Robertson. “It came complete with stanchion and a ball that had crossed the line – of course, the shape of the goal, and the place of the ball in the middle, made it look like an A. While the club crest now includes some additions, at the heart of it is the same image. More information about the design can be found here.”
A little bit of digging on our part reveals Scottish League One club Peterhead at least have a net visible in their badge. Although given the proximity of a fish and a ball to it, it may be a fishing net as much as a goal net. And Liam McGuigan points us in the direction of La Liga founding members and current fourth tier also-rans CE Europa. “They have the ubiquitous ball on their crest, along with a goal. Well, either that or it’s a subs’ bench.”
Sacked despite being immortalised in bronze
“Keiron Cunningham was recently sacked by St Helens after a bad run of form in Super League. He was a club legend and as such had a statue stood outside Saints’ Langtree Park. Has a football manager ever been sacked by a club who have already honoured them with a statue?” asks our very own Gregg Bakowski.
Ozer Dindjer points us in the direction of Alex de Souza, the Brazilian playmaker for Fenerbahce, who had a fan-funded statue unveiled outside the club’s stadium on 25 September 2012. Less than two weeks later, on 1 October, his contract was terminated by the club. “Very controversial, to this day!” fumes Ozer. So inflammatory in fact that fans burned T-shirts with the chairman Aziz Yıldırım’s face on them outside his house upon hearing the news.
Can we find a sacking of a player or manager who has a club-funded statue though? If so drop us a line at knowledge@theguardian.com.
Knowledge archive
“A friend of mine was telling me the other day about an Icelandic referee who disallowed a goal because his teeth had fallen out,” said Jon Bennett in 2008. “Am I right to assume he was talking bobbins?”
Technically Jon would be right to assume that – but only because the referee in question was actually Danish. Henning Erikstrup had been preparing to whistle for full time on Noerager’s 4-3 win over Ebeltoft when his false teeth fell out of his mouth and on to the pitch. Ebeltoft equalised moments later, only for Erikstrup, who had not even seen the goal, to immediately rule it out on the grounds that he would have whistled before it went in. “I had to get my teeth back before some player put his big foot on them,” parped the official afterwards when asked why he didn’t just whistle without his teeth in.
Can you help?
“While discussing the freefall of York City recently, we realised how contradictory the planned move to the York Community Stadium would be,” begins Kevin Francis. “The club left Fulfordgate for Bootham Crescent to be closer to the urban population and the train station. The move to the Community Stadium will see the opposite happen. With many other clubs relocating to the outskirts of their cities (a recent trip to Brighton nicely illustrated this) we pondered: which team’s ground is the furthest from their town/city centre?”
“In most seasons, teams end up playing one another two or three times in quick succession due to cup ties or replays coincidentally falling close to league games,” writes Tim Postins. “We know there are tiny leagues around the world where sides play each other every week, but what’s the shortest time that has elapsed between home and away league fixtures being played between two professional teams during a season?”
“In the five Premier League games last Saturday, all home teams failed to win but perhaps more surprisingly they all failed to score a single goal among themselves. Has this ever happened on a single day of league football, in the Premier League or elsewhere?” asks Aanu Adeoye.
“The last six winners of Derby County’s Player of the Season award – Craig Bryson for 2012 and 2014, Richard Keogh for 2013 and 2016, Will Hughes for 2015 and Scott Carson for 2017 – are all still with the club,” mails James Murton. “If we can take such awards as a yardstick, can any other teams boast a better record for holding on to their ‘best’ players?”
- Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet@TheKnowledge_GU.