npG is really not advanced stats, it’s just doing the logical thing and judging a players’ goal scoring merit on his non penalty goals (which is what npG literally stands for haha), since everyone is pretty good at scoring penalties and the best at scoring penalties are only like a fraction of a goal/season better than the worst at scoring penalties.
Indeed, everyone I’ve put on that list has at least one season more prolific than RvN’s most prolific for United, when considering penalties, except for maybe Benz, who is the most unique lone striker on that list. (If you’re going to make an argument or RvN, it would have to be on the basis of his PSV years, and given that Eredivisie has been an extremely friendly goal scoring environment relative to the rest of leagues for as long as I’ve lived it’s not an argument I really plan to make).
With Kane’s decline playing a major factor, IMO. Yes, chicken and the egg, but from what I’ve seen I really think he’s whichever comes first.
Just going to throw David Villa into the discussion.
Might not be quite good enough to feature in a top fifteen of thirty years or so, but I absolutely adore him as a player, the man was absolute class. Still gutted he never played for us.
Maybe the most biased of my picks but he gave us a fucking World Cup, and he was really goddamn prolific at his peak. (Scored 28 in 33 for Unai Emery’s 6th placed Valencia, think about that)
I only prefaced my post with “might not be quite good enough etc” just in case anyone gave me stick, because I couldn’t be arsed to look him up and see if the stats justified his inclusion. Like you, I’d have to get him in there somehow because I like him that much.
Yeah, he was really at the top of his powers going into the WC in 2010, his 21 in 32 the season after, heading into the WC, is arguably as impressive given that that team scored 59 goals in total (which was actually tied for 3rd in the league–this is why I said back in the day of those arguments about Emery that the context of La Liga was really important in saying that Emery was doing nothing more than meeting expectations by finishing 3rd in these seasons, this was right in the middle of the economic crisis, before Simeone, right when Barça is at the peak of its powers and Madrid as well, and Valencia was doing nothing at all interesting by scoring 59 goals and a +19 GD and getting 3rd place with the 3rd most talented squad in the league).
Yeah, that is a good shout, he was fantastic and honestly as a kid I remembered him as the more impressive between he and Romario, Romario was more prolific though…
He’s also a fantastic personality, if the worst of Barça fanboys haha.
Same. Remember watching football with dad and uncle as a kid during the period, and you could immediately tell Romario was exceptional, but could also see Stoichkov made him even better. The partnership between the two was lethal.
Suárez yes because he’s a lone striker. He gets on the list for the same reason as Benzema–because they were playing lone striker, so were a pure #9 even if their game might say otherwise. People like Raúl, Del Piero, Bergkamp, Stoichkov you have to leave off a list like this because the lines get blurred between 7/10/9. Suárez and Benzema we can objectively say are strikers because they never played as anything but a lone striker, even if later the tendencies on the pitch were unorthodox.
Suarez was a support/second striker at Groningen, right winger at Ajax and Liverpool, Messi is more the false 9 at Barcelona. When did he play lone striker?
Benzema is more a centre forward in the mold of Kluivert. Not really goalscorers but target man / play with the back at the type players who others could play off.
At Liverpool and Barcelona. I’m not gonna pretend I was following him closely at Ajax but for Liverpool he was mostly a lone striker (ok, that was indeed pretty fluid between him and Sturridge for a season, but the season after it obviously gets a lot more clear, and he’s a CF). At Barça he’s been the CF and I can’t agree at all that Messi is more the false 9 at Barça, Messi has played 10 or inside forward coming in nominally from the right behind Suárez since he’s come to Barcelona.
Benzema is a lone forward, as you agree; the characteristics of his playing style is a different issue, like I said, I tried to keep it as clean as possible because if I let in non-lone forwards the whole era of 90-2010 is filled with people who we can’t quite classify neatly like Baggio, Bergkamp, Del Piero, and so on. Benzema is unique precisely because he is the only top forward playing in this modern system (lone forward) yet playing it with very much the qualities of a 90s style 10/2nd forward, and making it work.
If it makes you feel better we could call the list modern CFs and CFs who were the highest on the pitch between them and their strike partner
I’d go with most of those but I would have Shearer and Wright ahead of players like Kane and van Nistelroy who are very effective and consistent strikers but don’t have have the all round ability that Shearer and Wright had.
Shearer was similar in style to Ibrahimovic but was playing in a Newcastle team that didn’t have the quality of player that Ibrahimovic was used to playing alongside.
Wright was in his thirties and yet was still playing at a level that was ahead of most other strikers in the PL.
He was also a player that could make something out of nothing and was more of a team player than someone like Kane or van Nistelroy who were more interested in their personal goal scoring achievements.
But it’s hard to argue with Ronaldo and Henry at the top of the striker list.
It doesn’t really matter, but I just don’t see him as CF (Suarez is the only one I disagree with lol). I can agree with the assessment that Barcelona adopted a more 4-3-1-2 approach which made him a centre forward.
For the rest of his career I saw him always playing off actual centre forwards (Nevland, Pantelic, Carroll, Cavani).
I mean, in the MSN Suárez was as clearly the CF as Benzema was in the BBC. His best season at Liverpool and all of his seasons at Barça (which are a lot now), have all been as a lone CF in the literal sense.
I think this is more of a perception thing on your part. Even his penultimate season at Liverpool it was quite fluid and it was often Sturridge coming in from the right wing, with Suárez the focal point creatively. And I recall many games where he was playing as a lone CF without Carroll.
Problem with Shearer and Ferdinands is for all the quality there underachievers.
Shearer would have been a great anywhere but Les is a tier down for me.
