Written by Ricky Murray
It’s that time again – the England football team are gathered together preparing for, according to many managers, a meaningless friendly – this time, against Denmark, so let the moaning commence. I am going to jump on the bandwagon and spout a few morose misgivings myself. I will get straight to the point – England have little in the form of prolific strikers. And that was a fact that was easy to see before last years World Cup fiasco where many people were saying that it was our best team since the days of Alf Ramsay. But now we are not blinded by the sunny weather and deluded optimism that marred our entering of the 2010 World Cup, it is clear to see how short in depth we really are and an indication of that was the selection of Kevin Davies for the France game – a sure sign of how desperate we have become.
I am only 23, but I cannot remember a time when we have been so short of strikers like we are today. I vividly recall all of the great forwards of the 1990’s and the amount that the England coach would have at his disposal and the amount that, despite their free-scoring ways, he would disappoint as we had so many. If you go back to the early Premiership years, we had a team capable of being world beaters. Well, we could have been if the man in charge at the time, Graham Taylor, picked the right mixture of players. Here is a list of the top scorers in some of the early seasons of the Premier League:
1992/93 – Name: Goals Scored 1993/94
1. Teddy Sheringham: 22 1. Andy Cole: 34
2. Les Ferdinand: 20 2. Alan Shearer: 31
3. Dean Holdsworth: 19 3. Matthew Le Tissier: 25
4. Mick Quinn: 17 4. Chris Sutton: 25
5. Alan Shearer: 16 5. Ian Wright: 23
6. David White: 16 6. Peter Beardsley: 21
7. Chris Armstrong: 15 7. Mark Bright: 19
8. Eric Cantona (French): 15 8. Eric Cantona (French): 19
9. Brian Deane: 15 9. Dean Holdsworth: 17
10. Mark Hughes (Welsh): 15 10. Rod Wallace: 17
11. Matthew Le Tissier: 15 11. Tony Cottee: 16
12. Mark Robins: 15 12. Les Ferdinand: 16
13. Paul Wilkinson: 15
14. Ian Wright: 15
1994/95 1995/96 Goals
1. Alan Shearer: 34 1. Alan Shearer: 31
2. Robbie Fowler: 25 2. Robbie Fowler: 28
3. Les Ferdinand: 24 3. Les Ferdinand: 25
4. Stan Collymore: 22 4. Dwight Yorke (Trinidadian): 17
5. Andy Cole: 21 5. Andrei Kanchelskis (Russian): 16
6. Jurgen Klinsman (German): 20 6. Teddy Sheringham: 16
7. Matthew Le Tissier: 19 7. Chris Armstrong: 15
8. Teddy Sheringham: 18 8. Ian Wright 15
9. Ian Wright: 18 9. Eric Cantona (French) 14
10. Uwe Rosler (German): 15 10. Stan Collymore 14
11. Dean Saunders (Welsh): 15 11. Dion Dublin 14
12. Chris Sutton: 15
*Stats courtesy of the Official Premier League website*
As you can see, the list of English goalscorers gradually started decreasing from the 1994/5 campaign. Even the strikers that were not considered international class were getting into double figures, which is not something that we can boast about now. During Taylor’s ill-fated reign as manager of the national side, the genius of Matthew Le Tissier gave way to the mercurial disappointment that was Carlton Palmer, but we could with some of Le Tissier’s magic at the moment even if it is just for entertainment; a term not often associated with Fabio Capello’s side. Many people say the Premiership has improved since those early days and although the England team were known to be pretty poor around this time, I am sure many of us would love to have some of the forwards who played in this period available to us now including a young Rodney Wallace, a man who never had the fortune of winning an international cap.
In Euro ’96 we did reasonably well as we had a good manager in Terry Venables who had an abundance of worthy players to choose from for his squad. It was a good problem to have and one that Capello would relish. At the present time, we only have three English players in the top ten scorers – Andy Carroll, Darren Bent and Kevin Nolan – and the Italian is a proven manager at club level, so we cannot really blame him for our lacklustre performances. Are our three top scorers and forward line really a match for Spain’s World Cup winners featuring David Villa, Fernando Torres and co? I don’t think so.
We could be a team of world beaters if the Football Association finally pull their fingers out and invest into football at grassroots level, but with our current crop of players, we should be happy to get to the quarter-finals of a major tournament.
