Finding a New Benchmark for Strikers

This is incredibly pedantic, but bear with me.

I was having a discussion the other day about the way fans of mid-table clubs constantly clamour for a 20 goal-a-season striker to take them to the next level every time the transfer window opens.

My perspective was that expecting anyone outside of the elite to score 20 goals in a season is unrealistic. Obviously the “20 goal” figure is arbitrary — what fans mean is they want a striker who scores goals regularly — but that benchmark is one that is embedded in the collective footballing consciousness for whatever reason.

So I decided to see just how unrealistic it was. I had a look back at the last 5 Premier League seasons to see how many players had got over that threshold. 5 seasons is, again, fairly arbitrary but it was a manageable amount of googling and it seemed a decent enough time frame to reflect current trends.

If you look purely at league goals scored, there were only 18 players in the last 5 seasons who managed 20+. That works out at between 3 and 4 every season.

If you look at goals scored in all competitions by Premier League players, that increases to 32 players in the last 5 seasons, or ~6 per season.

Most of that increase comes from players who were playing in the Champions League which is unsurprising given that playing in the Champions League provides a minimum of 6 additional games (about 10% more games than non-CL players) if your team qualifies for the group stage. Players who play for Champions League clubs are generally of higher quality, so it makes sense that they would score more goals given the extra playing time.

In fact, the only players in the last 5 seasons to score 20+ goals in all competitions while playing for a club that finished outside the top 6 were Jamie Vardy, who scored exactly 20 Premier League goals and 3 in the domestic cups in the 2017/18 season, and Romelu Lukaku, who scored 18 league goals and a further 7 in the League and FA Cups, in 15/16.

So the chances of your mid-table striker reaching the 20 goal benchmark are exceptionally slim based on recent history. What about 15 goals, though? Is that a more achievable target?

If you look purely at league goals, 42 players have scored 15+ (~8 per season).

If you look at goals scored in all competitions by Premier League players, there were 60 players to put away 15+ goals (exactly 12 per season).

Josh King, Christian Benteke, Fernando Llorente, Jermain Defoe, Jamie Vardy, Odion Ighalo, Troy Deeney, Diego Costa, Wilfried Bony, Romelu Lukaku, and Jay Rodriguez all managed to hit the 15+ benchmark while playing for clubs that finished outside of the top 6 in the Premier League.

That’s still not an enormous amount of non-top 6 players over the course of 5 seasons but 15 goals is somewhat attainable for the best of the rest and supporters should perhaps recalibrate their expectations accordingly. In reality, most fans should be happy if their forwards get into double figures but the 15+ goals a season striker is a more realistic pipe dream than the 20+ version.