Big Games, Lamela and other Fellas - The Premier League Returns

The Premier League is back! Not quite with the bang we were hoping, but with plenty of new signings and a set of Sunday Fixtures that may well live up to their 'Super' billing, that looks set to change. I'll have a look at a few of the new faces, and put my neck on the line to suggest where you should put your money on the latest Premier League odds this weekend......

New Signings
And it's with a few of those new signings that we'll start with. At the time of writing, it looks all but confirmed that Erik Lamela will be joining Spurs as a replacement for the Madrid bound Gareth Bale, and whilst there's no doubt that the Welshman will be a huge miss for the North London outfit, the fans should be in for a treat with the tricky Argentinian.

One of the main aims of this site is to attempt to track who are the big game players - by looking at the level of opposition that they score against. Whilst Bale scored a whopping 21 League goals for Spurs last season, to Lamela's 15, it is the incoming player that did it most against the Top 6 teams in the league. Despite Roma  finishing 6th, the 21 year old scored five times against Serie A's best to Bale's four in the Premier League. Three goals were scored against Udinese (5th) over the two games, and a brace against third place AC Milan saw the winger/number 10 thrive in high pressure games. And just outside the Top 6 in 7th place was Roma's fierce rivals, Lazio, whom also conceded to Lamela. Chuck in a brace of assists against 2nd placed Napoli and you have proof of a big game temperament indeed.

Another deeper lying player who joined a London club was Andre Schurrle who somewhat surprisingly started the game away at Man Utd. Whilst he's a good prospect at 22, looking at his scoring performances against the Top teams in the Bundesliga last season (Below is Top 5 as it's an 18 team league), he was quite unlikely to worry the Champions defence.

Two other big name signings to join the Premier League in the summer were Spanish duo Alvaro Negredo and Roberto Soldado. Both had excellent scoring records against the Top Teams in Spain. The new Man City striker Negrado scored 5 goals against the top teams despite Sevilla finishing in 9th, with 4 strikes against Valencia (in a 4-3 win) and a goal against Barcelona. Soldado went one better with 6 goals against the big teams, with Pellegrini's Malaga, Real Sociedad and Atletico Madrid the victims.

The Big Games
And so onto this weekend's games. Whilst league positions don't really mean an awful lot at this stage of the season, it's fair to say that Liverpool vs Man Utd and Arsenal vs Spurs are massive games - both derbies of sorts.

So who are the big game players that thrive in these games? Based on last season, Robin van Persie and Luis Suarez scored the most goals against the Top 6 with six strikes each. Unfortunately for Liverpool, the controversial Uruguayan isn't available for this match. But all is not lost. Daniel Sturridge is in great form with 4 goals in 3 appearances this season, and looking at his 2012-13 stats, he managed 3 goals against the Top 6 despite only signing for the Reds in January - with goals against former clubs Chelsea (h) and Man City (a) as well as this weekend's opponents (also away). With that kind of form, the 6-1 first goal scorer bet looks a decent price and if you're feeling brave, he's at 13-1 to score twice. For those of you that fancy the away team, then RvP is at 4-1 for first or last goal.

Elsewhere, Gerrard had three goals against the Top 6 last season, one in the corresponding fixture, as well as strikes against City and Spurs, whilst Rooney topped the charts against Top 6 teams in the 2011-12 with 7 goals.

In the North London derby, Theo Walcott had a decent knack of doing it in the big games. And last season was no different, with goals against United, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and Spurs. In fact it was only Man City in the Top 7 that kept him out. At 7-1 for first goal scorer the England winger could make it four seasons in row against Spurs.

For Spurs, if Lamela isn't available then there isn't a great deal of big game scorers to bet on. Last season, Adebayor only scored 5 league goals, but 3 were against the best teams. He's unlikely to play, as is Bale (4 goals) and their other big game scorer last season was Clint Dempsey (also 4 goals) who has since departed the Premier League. For an outside bet, Jan Vertonghen scored three times against Man Utd and Liverpool. He's available at 22-1 for first scorer or 15/2 at any time. If not, then it's Soldado at 7-1 that may be their best hope.

Good luck!

Cheers,

Liam

Top 50 Big Game Scorers - Some Findings

Based on the large amount of feedback from the Guardian Football link to the Top 50 Big Game Scorers piece, I thought I'd add a bit more detail to answer some of the questions raised in the comments:

In terms of rankings, I've added an interactive table at the bottom of the post including the Top 200 - so filter on whatever you think is relevant for what you want to find out - whether that be club goals only, or just English Players, or even the decades - the tool can give a bit more detail.

Where's Maradona? (and others)

Maradona doesn't feature in the Top 50 Big Game Scorers list due to not scoring in the biggest games as regularly as others. That's not to say he's not one of the greatest players of all time, because only a fool would argue that. I'm just saying that based on major Global, European and South American Tournaments, Maradona scored just three goals in the Semi Final or Final stages - pretty low for the man many consider to be the greatest of all time. Given his club and national team goal scoring record, it's quite surprising - he has 311 in 589 club games and 34 in 91 for his country. That's a prolific strike rate for anyone - so for a man considered greatest of all time, and who has played in four World Cups, and Three Copa Americas, you'd expect more than just two Semi Final goals (in the same match 1986).

That's two World Cup Finals (1986 & 1990), a Semi Final (1990), and a Copa America Semi (1987) - without him scoring. In fact, he didn't score once in the 1990 World Cup. It's obvious that he was more than just goals - his assists tell you that, but for a prolific scorer, his strike rate wasn't carried into the biggest games. His other big game goal was a penalty in the UEFA Cup Final of 1989.

Andres Iniesta - 3 goals/9 points - World Cup Final (2012), Champions League Semi Final (2009 & 2012)

Didier Drogba - 4 goals/9 points - Champions League Final (2012), Champions League Semi Final (2 x 2008, 2012)

Andriy Shevchenko - 4 goals/8 points - Champions League Semi Final (2 x 1999, 2003, 2005)

Steven Gerrard - 2 goals/5 points - Champions League Final (2005), UEFA Cup Final (2001)

Frank Lampard - 3 goals/7 points - Champions League Final (2008), Champions League Semi Final (2004, 2008)

Rivaldo - 3 goals/11 points - Copa America Final (1999), Copa America Semi Final (2 x 1999)

Carlos Tevez - 6 goals/11.5 points - Copa Libertadores Final (2003) Copa Libertadores Semi Final  (3 x 2003, 2 x 2004)

Lothar Matthaus - 5 goals/11 points - UEFA Cup Final (1980, 1981), European Cup Semi Final (2 x 1987, 1989)

Luis Suarez - 3 goals/11 points - Copa America Final (2011), Copa America Semi Final (2 x 2011)

Lineker and Klose have just one entry each - World Cup Semi Final in 1990 and Euro 2008 Semi Final respectively.

Steven Gerrard for example, is known for stepping up at important times, but the 2006 FA Cup Final goal for example is a domestic cup and although very prestigious, not included in the biggest games in World Football. Similarly, the goal in the Champions League to get Liverpool to the next round against Olympiakos, was a group game match. Similarly, a hat trick in the Merseyside Derby is undoubtedly showing a big game temperament, but this list is for the very biggest games in World Football.

I can confirm that Roger Milla did not feature.

Appearances and Assists

Some interesting points were made on the opportunities that the players had. In this choice of games, George Best for example only had the one game that he could have scored in - the 1968 European Cup Final, in which he showed his Big Game pedigree by scoring 2 goals. Alternatively, Thierry Henry has played in the following Finals without scoring: World Cup 2006, Euro 2000, UEFA Cup 2000, Champions League 2006, 2009. Also the Semi Final stages of all of the above only brought one goal - in the UEFA Cup Semi Final against Lens.A footballing great without doubt, but not on the biggest stages.

So on that front, the opportunities to join the list are worth noting, but unfortunately the line up data for all of the tournaments going back to 1950 aren't available, so had to be omitted.

And the same can be said of assists. Although I mention Maradona's lack of goals in the World Cup Finals, he did create the winning goal for Burruchaga in 1986 with a sensational pass that split the West Germany defence and left the striker clean through. However, the assist information is not widely available for all of the big games from 1950, so unfortunately they had to be left out. That's why the article was specifically called Big Game Scorer rather than Player.

Weighting of Goals

Also another valid point is the weighting of goals. Should Fernando Torres' two European Championship Final goals be worth the same weight? The 2008 goal was the winning goal in a 1-0 win, compared to the 2012 goal which was the third in a 4-0 win. However, given the scale of the project, this just wasn't possible. Plus there's the further issue of weighting, when the games themselves have already been weighted.

Top 200 (and 10)

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What happened to the great English Striker?

With twenty seasons of the Premier League completed at the end of the 2011-12 season, I had a look at the best goalscoring partnerships (click here), and one thing that jumped out was the quality of English Striker in the first ten years, compared to the last ten. So with that in mind, I thought I'd highlight the trend...

Wayne Rooney is currently considered the only world class English striker and after his showing in Euro 2012 (and World Cup 2010 for that matter), even question marks have been raised over him. Runner up for the Premier League Golden Boot in both the 2009-10 and 2011-12 seasons, he's undoubtedly about more than just goals - but he's the closest English winner for the Golden Boot the league has seen since Kevin Phillips 30 goal haul in 1999-2000. That's twelve seasons without an Englishman top scoring in the English top division.

Now this isn't a dig a Rooney - far from it, he's doing his best to live up to the fine goalscoring tradition of his fellow country men, and but for injury at the end of the 2009-10 season, he surely would have gone on to win the title that Drogba won. It's just that he's England's best forward, and he's not even the best striker at his club anymore - playing second fiddle to the man that beat him in the scoring charts last season, Robin van Persie. So when did it all go wrong for the English forward, and why?

Rules

I've gone through the Top Scorers lists from the first Premier League season in 1992-93 (Englishman Brian Deane scoring the first goal) to the 2011-12 season - a nice neat 20 seasons, complete with a handy 10 year split. To keep things equal, I've only considered Premier League Goals, and although there were 42 game seasons until 1995-96, I've left them in as it was the same number of games regardless of the nationality of the players.
In terms of threshold, it's the Top 10 ranked goal scorers for each season. In several occasions that was more than ten players as there were several tied on the same amout of goals.

First Ten Years

You almost get nostalgic looking back. Shearer, Sheringham, Wright, Fowler, Collymore, Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand. All top class forwards. Even Michael Owen scored over half of his goals in the first ten years of the Premier League. Then you had good players like Chris Sutton, Dion Dublin, Tony Cottee, Kevin Phillips and Kevin Campbell - good players and prolific in spells.

So 21 different nationalities were represented in the first ten years of Premier League Top Scorers. No real surprise to see that English players were in the Top 10 scorers on 66 occasions out of a possible 106 - with the closest nationalities being Holland and France with 7 entries each. The players involved? Cantona, Anelka and Henry for France and Bergkamp, Hasselbaink and van Nistelrooy for the Dutch, all legends of the Premier League, and all top class talents.

The Americas are represented by just four entries - Juninho, Hamilton Ricard, Paulo Wanchope and midfield Gus Poyet. Somewhat surprisingly, there's only one entry from African players - with France born and bred Freddie Kanoute hitting 11 goals in 2000-01 (10th). The only other entries from outside of Europe were Australia's Mark Viduka, whose 17 goals in the same season, saw him finish in 4th place for the Golden Boot, and Trinidad and Tobago's Dwight Yorke who made the Top 10 on four occasions.

Elsewhere, there's another surprise when looking at the Ireland (Quinn), Scotland (Gallacher) and Wales (Hughes, Saunders, Hartson), who had a combined five entries. Perhaps the rot for Scottish football in particular has set in earlier than some thought, but that's for another discussion.

What of the English players? Well seven of the ten seasons saw an English winner - the first six seasons, followed by Kevin Phillips debut Premier League season in 1999-00. Shearer (three occasions), Andy Cole and Phillips all made or bettered the 30 goal mark, whilst Fowler (twice), Ferdinand and Sutton all scored 25 goals or more in a season. In total, the first ten years of the Premier League saw English players score 20 goals or more on 21 occasions.

Second Ten Years

The standout stat and the the centrepiece of this article is the drop in English goalscorers - there's been a reduction of 50% in the Top 10 ranked scorers list. Whilst the likes of Shearer, Ferdinand, Sheringham and Cole were all still playing into the second decade of the Premier League, they were all on the way down and nearing the end of their careers. Owen and Fowler were still in their twenties but couldn't match the form they'd shown earlier in their careers - both saw a significant drop in their strike rates after leaving Liverpool.

 

There were still good performances, of the 33 entries in to the Top Scorers from the English players, there were seven 20+ goal seasons - twice from Rooney, and one each from Shearer, Andy Johnson, Darren Bent and James Beattie. Making up the list is midfielder Frank Lampard. The interesting thing there is that the entries from Johnson, Bent and Beattie were exceptions rather than rules. Take Andy Johnson for example - aside from his debut 21 goal Premier League season, his other tallies were 11, 6, 7, 3, and 3. Hardly prolific. Similarly, James Beattie's 23 goals in the 2002-03 season were followed by 14, 3, 1, 10, 2, 7 and 2.

Jermaine Defoe makes it into the Top 10 scorers list on just two occasions. He looks odds on to do so again this season, but it's quite a surprising stat from one of the better English Strikers in the second decade of the Premier League - especially for one known as a poacher.

Scotland fall out of the equation all together, whilst Wales are restricted to just one entry - Craig Bellamy's 13 goals in 2005-06. Ireland fare a little better, largely thanks to Robbie Keane and one good season from Kevin Doyle. When comparing to the first decade, the influence from both inside and outside of Europe has grown in almost all cases.

The Americas are now represented nine times, Africa on 18 occasions and Australia up to three. New entries include Argentina, Spain and Portugal, whilst France and Holland remain the highest non British/Irish countries - with France up to 13 and Holland up to 10. In total, there were 26 nationalities represented in the Top 10 scorers lists from 2003-12

What has happened to the great English Striker?

Number of Foreign Players

Obvious as it may be, the first and foremost reason and shown clearly above, is the number of foreign players is the largest factor.

However, for every Henry, van Nistelrooy and van Persie, there's a Manucho, Boselli and Fuertes. In fact there's been several highly rated prolific scorers arriving in the Premier League with high hopes and expectations, but a relatively small fee. And that's the key point - the price. The market for English players is bloated beyond belief. It's easy to raise the example of Andy Carroll - £35m for half a good season in the Premier League. Michu costs £2m. Not really much to think about there.

For all the sub standard players like those mentioned above, and the likes of Sava, Aloisi, and Mpenza, a home grown player is seeing their progress blocked. Last season saw Grant Holt score 15 Premier League goals - because he was given a chance. Danny Graham managed a decent 12 - just outside the Top 10. This season, Rickie Lambert is doing his best to follow in their footsteps. All English strikers who have scored goals in the top flight after spending most of their careers to date in the lower leagues. Add in Kevin Phillips, Dean Ashton and Marcus Stewart, and there's a case to be made for giving more players from lower leagues a chance.

Why were they in the lower leagues in the first place? Well the influx of foreign players - both talented and not so, squeezes out English players. Looking at Jermaine Defoe again, he was sold from Tottenham the first time around as he was deemed surplus to requirements - Giovanni Dos Santos was one of the replacement forwards signed. Peter Crouch was also shown the door at Aston Villa, Liverpool and later Spurs. Players kept in his position include Marcus Allback, Andriy Voronin, Nabir El Zhar, and an ageing Louis Saha. It's a similar story for several English Strikers.

Another element of the foreign influx is the standard of defender that's been brought in - Stam, Desailly, Bilic, Vidic et al, have all made life tougher for the forwards to score.
To be clear, I'm not against Foreign Players, but wouldn't it be better if only those more talented than English players were brought in? Unfortunately, due to the transfer fees involved when buying British, clubs will continue to look abroad. This isn't restricted just to the second decade (Boogers, Silenzi etc..) but the frequency has certainly increased.

Formations

Another large factor is that of formation. Looking back at the successful Premier League teams of recent years, and how many have actually played two up front? The death of the strike duo originated in Ferguson's quest to conquer Europe. The signing of Juan Sebastien Veron saw a move to a 4-5-1 or 4-4-1-1 formation, as he looked to sure up the midfield. That led to van Nistelrooy largely leading the line as the focal point, with runners from midfield working off him.

And the next major change was with Jose Mourinho's introduction to Chelsea. The 2002-03 season saw a great partnership of Hasselbaink and Gudjohnsen - with Zola coming in regularly. The season after, it was Hasselbaink and Mutu. Under Mourinho, Chelsea moved to a 4-3-3 - with Drogba the lone striker, supported by two wide players - initially Robben and Duff, and later Joe Cole. That formation has remained in place up to the present day - the Champions League Final saw a £50m striker left on the bench as there was only one starting striking role and Drogba was ahead in form. That 4-3-3 also found it's way to Man Utd (Tevez/Ronaldo/Rooney), Arsenal, Spurs and just about all of the top clubs. This season, Liverpool are also playing it, as are City (at times).

So what impact has this had to English Strikers? Well a few. The football upbringing of the average English striker is in a 4-4-2 formation for a start. As a result, they're often lacking experience in leading the line alone. It's also led to many players pushed out wide. In the 2008 title winning season, many will recall Wayne Rooney stuck out on the left wing - resulting in just 12 league goals that season. Similarly, the likes of Daniel Sturridge and Theo Walcott have seen their opportunities in a central role restricted. Sturridge has had to move to Liverpool in an attempt to play through the middle, whilst at the time of writing, it appears to be te sticking point for Walcott signing a new contract at Arsenal. A return to the 4-4-2 of old would see more opportunities for these type of players.

Goal Scoring Midfielders

Tied in with the change in formation, has seen one change in the scoring habits. That of the scoring midfielder. Looking at the Top 10 scorers by season in the first decade of the Premier League, there were seven entries from midfield (four of them were from Matt Le Tissier). Fast forward to the second decade and that increases to 17. Pires, Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, Dempsey and others have all made the Top 10 goal scorers. This season has seen Wales winger, Gareth Bale do the same.

So whilst the goals are drying up for English strikers (and indeed all strikers), the frequency of the midfielders in the Top 10 scorers list has significantly increased.

The Future

Whilst the change in formation and the price of English footballers remain as they are, it's unlikely that we'll see a return to prominence of the great English goalscorer. There are promising young talents such as Sturridge and Welbeck, but there's far too few of them to suggest a recovery. A quick look at the first choice forwards of each team tells a story.

The dip in quality is best highlighted when looking at the England Squads for major tournaments. Euro 96 saw Shearer (31 goals), Sheringham (16), Fowler (28) and Ferdinand (25). Jump forward to Euro 2012 and Rooney (27), Carroll (4), Welbeck (9) and Defoe (11) were the forward options available to Roy Hodgson. In 1996, Ian Wright and Andy Cole didn't make the squad - both prolific strikers.

100 Goal Club

Just for your viewing pleasure, to finish off, a list of all the players with 100 Premier League goals. Just four of the English strikers in the list are currently active in the Premier League, with midfielders Scholes and Lampard coming to the end of their Premier League careers:

Player Comparison: Steven Gerrard vs Frank Lampard

After starting the Player Comparison series with the two best players in the world, how do you follow that? In terms of quality of player, you can’t (unless I had the Pele/Maradonna stats handy). But the idea behind this series was to not only look at two comparable players based on stats, but also to help settle pub debates. And so with that in mind, and from a Premier League starting point the contenders choose themselves. Fewer players have been at the heart of debates and comparisons, both for rival club fans, but also for England fans.

Piggy back football never really took off

 

The Contenders:

 

In the Red corner, we have Liverpool’s home grown King of the Kop, Stevie G. Gerrard has been strutting his stuff at Anfield since 1998, and for the national team since 2000. In the Blue corner, we have his Southern counterpart, JT’s BFF, Frank Lampard. Whilst Gerrard has only known life at a big club, Lampard began his football education at West Ham’s prolific youth academy. Under the tutelage of Tony Carr and then Uncle Harry, young Frank made his debut in the 1995-96 season (first on loan at Swansea) before eventually moving on to current club Chelsea in the summer of 2001 for what at the time seemed an excessive £11m but in hindsight, was something of a bargain. He made his England debut in 1999.

The Background:

Lampard is 2 years older than his Mersey rival and has been on fans radars that bit longer. Having always been an attacking central midfielder, he perhaps had a head start on Gerrard in terms of goals scoring. Those of you who can remember far enough, will recall that Gerrard initially broke into the England team as the deeper lying defensive midfielder next to the attacking Paul Scholes. It appeared as though Lampard was being groomed to play the attacking role from the middle, whilst Scholes was pushed out left. However, by this point Gerrard had started to display his attacking instincts, rather than being the holding player he first appeared. The result being a headache for their national coach for the best part of a decade. Gerrard’s been pushed forward, Lampard back, Gerrard wide, and Lampard as part of a diamond. Yet still, England have never really performed with the two players in tandem. 

 National team aside, there’s also been their club form, with both known throughout the World as two of the best goal scoring midfielders in football. Add to that a bit of bad blood between the clubs and Gerrard’s aborted move to Chelsea, and you have a debate on your hands. Who is or was better?

Rules:

As with the Messi vs Ronaldo comparison, I’ll be comparing their league form as there are no rankings applied to the Champions League. The comparison will begin from the 2001-02 season when Lampard began his Chelsea career. I’ll also review their international goals as well. Unlike the Ronaldo v Messi comparison, this will be based on final league positions.

Premier League:

And so onto the Stats. At first glance, and much to my surprise, there’s actually no comparison at all. In the ten and a half seasons since Lampard joined Chelsea, he’s scored 123 league goals in 362 games to Gerrard’s 78 in 320. That’s a rate of 0.34 per game compared to 0.24 or on the other hand, a goal every 3 games for Lampard aginst one every 4 games for Gerrard. Case closed.

 

All Hail Frank Lampard – king of the goalscoring midfielders. He’s got more goals, more assists, and more against the Top 6 with a very impressive 24 goals compared to Gerrard’s 14. And he can be relied on to play more games each season. Gerrard only comes out on top in terms of Average Opposition. On average, across the 10 and a half season, his goals are against 11.82 ranked opponents, compared to Lampards 12.39.

Well, that didn’t take long at all, I should probably start on the Henry vs van Nistelrooy comparison.
But wait. Scratch a little under the surface and things are indeed a little closer, and worth a comparison. Since Zola left Chelsea at the end of the 2002-03 season, Lampard has been taking his teams penalties, and he’s scored 33 of them. Take the penalties out and he’s on 90 goals. In that same time, Gerrard has scored 12 penalties, taking his goal tally down to 66. Now 90 vs 66 is still a decent gap, but if we took Gerrard’s goalscoring rate and applied it to 362 appearances, he’d be on for 75 goals.

Lampard is still on top, but once you take away the penalties, the goals per game is now just 0.25 to 0.21. Gerrard is still doing it against better opposition as well – his Average Opposition Index is 12.29 compared to Lampard’s 12.80. The most telling numbers though are in the goals against Top 6 Opposition. With penalties removed, Lampard loses almost half of his goals against the top ranked opponents. It’s now only 11 goals vs Gerrard’s 10 goals – and this is essentially in a season more of appearances – 42 extra.

So from a big game player point of view, the stats are now leaning towards Gerrard. What must also be taken into account is the teams that they play in. Since 2001, Chelsea have won the title 3 times and finished 2nd a further 4 times. Their average position over the 10 full seasons is 2nd. In the same period, Liverpool have finished 2nd twice, but more tellingly, have finished outside the Champions League Top 4 spots in four seasons. Their average position is 4th. Even the most die hard Liverpool fan would have to admit that Chelsea have consistently had better players. Goal scoring opportunities, and indeed assists are largely dependent on team mates.

Looking at the above graph, both players best goalscoring seasons have coincided with the team’s highest finish. In 2008-09, Gerrard scored 16 league goals (12 after penalties) in the season that they’ve come closest to winning the Premier League, finishing the season on 86 points. Lampard meanwhile scored an incredible 22 goals in 2009-10 (13 after penalties) to end Manchester United’s 3 year spell of dominance. This would suggest each player’s goals were significant to the club’s final positions.

 

It’s not an exact science, but if you take out the goals scored by each player, Chelsea would be worse of by an average of 3.5 points per season, whereas Gerrard’s equivalent contribution is 3.6. Nothing in it. But what about the percentage of the overall team points – to allow for the quality of the teams. Well once again, it’s very close. Lampard’s goals are directly responsible for 4.33% per season of Chelsea’s points over the last 10 seasons. Gerrard’s goals are worth 5.33% of Liverpool’s total points per season. On this measure, Gerrard is more important to his team. For the record, with penalties, Lampard’s percentage increases to 7.33% compared to Gerrard’s 6.02%.

What this parameter doesn’t take into account is the order of the goal. As mentioned in the last Premier League update, “you could for example take Chelsea’s 3-1 win over Norwich earlier in the season. As Chelsea won by two goals and had three different goal scorers, take one of Bosingwa’s, Lampard’s or Mata’s goals away and the result would still be 2-1 to Chelsea – meaning that there is no direct impact to the result and number of points. In reality – the opening goal of a game is always important (Bosingwa), and Frank Lampard’s goal in that match was in the 84th minute, which put Chelsea back ahead. Both were important goals, but due to Mata’s injury time goal – the importance in this formula lessens.”

With this in mind, what’s the average order of their goals? We know that the first goal is always the most important for a team, whilst the second can often prove decisive. For Chelsea, for both his 123 league goals, and the 90 from open play, Lampard on average, scores Chelsea’s 2.1 goal. In the same period, Gerrard’s 78 league goals have come as Liverpool’s 1.9 goal, compared to 1.8 after penalties are removed.

So all in all, looking at all of the stats based on their goalscoring, the average and range of the opponent, and the importance to their teams, there’s very little to choose between them. Lampard has more goals, Gerrard has a better opponent per goal. Lampard has more assists, but Gerrard is more important to his team. I hate to sit on the fence, and generally dislike to do so, but there’s nothing in it.

Internationals:

The lads enjoying another high point with England

 

But what of their contributions to the national team. After all, the biggest talking point around the players is why can’t they play together? Well as we’ve seen above, they’re just too similar. Sir Alf Ramsey famously didn’t choose the best players in every position to win the World Cup back in 66. He played the players that gave the best balance – a balance that’s missing when they’ve played together in the middle. We know that Gerrard is likely to be pushed further forward or even out wide if both players make the starting line up in the upcoming European Championships, but who deserves the attacking central midfield slot?

I’m afraid it’s not much clearer at International level either. They’ve both played pretty much the same amount of games for England, and in that time, Lampard leads the goal count with 23 to 19. However, once penalties are removed, Gerrard has actually scored 19 to Lampard’s 16.

Both have scored against good opposition – Gerrard’s first goal was in the 5-1 win away at Germany in the 2002 World Cup qualifying game. Lampard can count goals against number 1 ranked France (Euro 2004) and Spain in his tally. Of their goals, 7 of Lampard’s have been in friendlies, compared to Gerrard’s 5. The average opposition index leans in Lampard’s favour by 14 places, which would suggest he is the bigger game player for England. Indeed, he was voted England’s player of the year after his 3 goal haul in Euro 2004. The Elephant in the room though is the World Cup. Gerrard has scored 3 goals in the two World Cup’s he’s played in whereas Lampard has received criticism (particularly in 2006) for failing to do so, despite many many shots. He can count himself unlucky that his excellent chip against Germany in the last World Cup was incorrectly disallowed.

So looking at the Internationl records, we’re still in the dark. Lampard has the better Average Opposition, but more goals are in Friendlies, and he takes the penalties. He did have a great European Championships, but Gerrard has scored in 2 World Cups, and has more goals in open play – despite starting off in the holding role.

In Conclusion:

In terms of who’s the better player for the big games, I’m afraid it’s just too close to call. Both players have scored in Champions League finals. Both have scored decisive goals in FA Cup finals. Gerrard has also scored in the League Final and the UEFA Cup Final, whilst Lampard has scored the goals to win Chelsea the title. Both have scored 4 league goals vs perennial title winners Manchester United. Both are big game players. Lampard has 22 European Goals in 89 games (including 4 with West Ham), Gerrard has 38 in 116. Gerrard is more important to his team, whereas Lampard does it more consistantly, albeit against slightly lower opposition.

Looking strictly at the stats, it’s impossible to call this one, and despite hating sitting on the fence, this one will have to be left up to each reader’s interpretation. What can be agreed on by all, is that they are both outstanding players, and will go down as two of the Premier League and indeed European Football’s best goalscoring midfielders.

Any comparisons you’d like to see, please let me know.

Cheers,

Liam

Note: Stats were correct up to January 13th 2012