Though they are presently out of action with a broken rib and hamstring injury it won’t be long before Sergio Aguero and Alvaro Morata are back scoring for fun in their respective blue shirts. It’s what they do, as natural to them as making small-talk about the weather or eating toast is to you or I. Already the deadly duo have notched up six goals each in the Premier League and a goal apiece in the Champions League, a prolificacy that equates to one every 87.4 minutes for the Argentine and an astonishing 82 minute hiatus between strikes for Morata, the latter achieved despite the Spanish international supposedly requiring a period of readjustment to English football.
It is reasonable then to suggest that both forwards are more than capable of smashing the twenty goal barrier this term, that arbitrary amount that six-yard predators are traditionally judged by. In fact, even with their current lay-offs factored in don’t be surprised if one or both surpasses the Golden Boot-winning average since the Premier League’s formation in 1992: 26.4 goals is well within their range.
An extension of this assumption is that these formidable finishers will be challenging for the individual honour in question and given their fertile start to the new campaign it’s equally reasonable to have them down as favourites. They’re not. Indeed neither hit-man is even second in the odds trailing as they do to Harry Kane and Romelu Lukaku.
Can you ever recall the top flight being blessed with four such lethal marksmen? If you can then you’re probably thinking back to another era, another time, when Alan Shearer broke hearts by the bountiful and Robbie Fowler’s nose was plastered with nasal strips. Add ‘Sir’ Les Ferdinand and Teddy Sheringham into the mix and goalkeepers of the mid-nineties couldn’t decide who to have nightmares about.
Since then we’ve witnessed a plethora of fearsome frontmen whose very names conjure up images of defenders strewn in anguish and the ball once again rippling the back of the net: Henry; Van Nistelrooy; Drogba; Van Persie; stylish assassins one and all but though their career paths entwined they never peaked at the same time creating the phenomenon of what is occurring now. That phenomenon is a quartet of strikers, all at the very top of their game, essentially being a tag-team that terrorises defences on a weekly basis. While Kane has torn into the 2017/18 season – following his obligatory slow start of course – as he attempts to become only the third striker to win the Golden Boot three years running, Lukaku has immediately shed his price-tag and fired home a ratio of goals that exceed his number of games across all competitions. Between them Kane, Lukaku, Morata and Aguero have scored 25 times before October in the league alone. That’s an astonishing 14.2% of the Premier League’s total tally.
It may be early days yet but this has all the hallmarks of a golden era and if that wasn’t satisfying enough it gets even more invigorating when it’s contrasted to its earlier incarnation.
Back in the nineties when the big beasts of Shearer and company roamed with intent strikers were the superstars, the end product that all roads – or should that be passing lanes? – led to. Their obligation was to score over and above tracking back or getting involved in build-up play: they were even partnered to further aid their quest. An evolvement in tactics soon took away their striking companion before the emergence of false nines made their selfish pursuit of poaching goals out of kilter with modern trends, often consigning their specialist role to the bench to be called upon only in desperation. In 2008 the Guardian earnestly asked if this was the ‘end of forward thinking’ and four years later their query was partly answered as Spain won the Euros at a canter with a 4-6-0 formation that rendered the traditional ‘pure’ centre-forward surplus to requirements. Granted there was still Edinson Cavani and Karim Benzema and Radamel Falcao, players who stalked off the pitch compromised in victory if they failed to get onto the score-sheet, but by and large out-and-out predators who sought out the following morning’s headlines were in danger of becoming an exception to the rule.
That is anything but the case right now with the top ten of the Premier League’s current leading goal-scorers only housing three wide attackers in Sterling, Salah and Martial. Box-to-box midfielders and numbers 10s evidently need not apply because the rest are made up of marksmen and better yet headed by four of the deadliest around. The ancestral instincts of Greaves and Lineker courses through their movement and their aim is true.
This is not only a golden age for strikers in English football. It is a celebration of their return to prominence.
