Bobby Zamora, Kevin Davies and David Nugent. 3 rather modest names to have played for the 3 Lions in the past few years and with no offence to them, you can’t help but wonder how players with goal scoring statistics as low as theirs could play for the England national team.
Unfortunately it’s just a reflection of how things have gone in recent times. Long gone are the days of Geoff Hurst, Jimmy Greaves, Gary Linekar or Alan Shearer. In the not too distant past you had to score about 18+ goals for something like 2 seasons to even be considered for a call-up. Nowadays a good run of form for a few weeks and you’re in. As recently as the 90’s you had Linekar, Shearer, Les Ferdinand, Teddy Sheringham, Andy Cole and Michael Owen all representing their country during the decade. Cole in particular was a prime example of how much competition strikers used to face. He scored 34 goals in 40 Premier League games in the 1993/94 season for Newcastle United, winning the golden boot. He wasn’t even called up to the England squad and was only capped as late as 1995. Nowadays you look at the likes of Danny Welbeck, who has scored a combined 12 goals in the last 2 league seasons and is currently leading the line-up top for England. Madness!
The only truly consistent marksmen in the past few seasons has been Wayne Rooney but even then he has begun playing further and further back from goal in recent years. So why have English strikers gone so far backwards? Well the obvious factor is the well documented mass rise of foreign players in the Premier League and subsequent dip in home-grown talent being given an opportunity. Also the gradual change of playing style may not suit them as much. The game is far more technical now and the ball is played on the floor far more than it used to, with slower build ups. Perhaps the English strikers preferred the old days when long balls and crosses were played into them far more often. I would suspect it is a mixture of both with the first theory playing a larger role.
However, recently things have slowly begun to change. It’s only been small progress but it appears that some English goal scorers seem to be rising to prominence once more. Danny Ings and Charlie Austin at newly-promoted sides Burnley and QPR respectively, have caught the eye this season. The latter has been in sensational goal scoring fettle, with calls of Austin for England filling more newspaper pages as the weeks go by. His form has been good enough to challenge any of the league’s best strikers this season and has almost single-handedly given QPR a fighting chance of staying up. Ings has also been influential in his sides fight against relegation, if slightly less prolific than the before mentioned Austin. An England U-21 international, he has really begun to find his fight in the top flight and is now regularly amongst the goals as the Clarets’ fight for survival takes some shape.
saido Berahino is another promising talent, who started the season like a house on fire. He has also been in top goal scoring form for the England U-21’s for quite some time now and many rate him highly. Berahino’s fine showings forced Roy Hodgson to place him in the England squad for games against Slovenia and Scotland in the last international break. He didn’t receive any game time though and since then disciplinary problems have halted his progress. Although in the past few weeks he has re-found some goal scoring form and will hopefully get a longer run in the team under newly appointed Albion boss, Tony Pulis. West Brom have stated that any offer in the region of £20m this January will be accepted, with Liverpool and Tottenham sniffing around the young star.
Slightly higher up the league, Tottenham Hotspur appear to have found a rising star of their own. Harry Kane has been nothing short of sensational so far this season. His all-round play as well as impressive goal getting stats have asserted his place in Mauricio Pochettino’s starting line-up. His place in the team has coincided with Spurs’ rise up the league and his best performance came in their last outing against Chelsea. The young striker scored 2 goals and was generally outstanding as he was the undisputed man of the match and his side won 5-3 against Jose Mourinho’s rigid back four. A call-up to the national team is now becoming somewhat inevitable for the new fans favourite at White Hart Lane.
What’s more the state of England’s frontline has been improving gradually in the past year or so. Daniel Sturridge looked like a top player for Liverpool before his unfortunate series of injuries and Wayne Rooney is returning to somewhere near his best form under Louis Van Gaal at Manchester United. Also in the likes of Patrick Bamford, Izzy Jay Brown, Adam Armstrong, James Wilson and Chuba Akpom – there are a lot of highly talented teenage talents set to make a name for themselves in the future.
It has been only a start though and nothing more, but things are beginning to look more positive for the one time winners of the World Cup, in a goal scoring sense. It will be extremely hard to replicate the glory days of the 90’s or previous eras due to the considerable dip of English players within the Premier League but progress is being made and hopefully Roy Hodgson’s men will have a frontline to be feared of once again in the coming years. After a while in the wilderness, it would appear that the English centre forward is making a comeback!