The ’20-goal striker’ is modern football’s unicorn

Every fan demands a ’20-goal-a-season striker’ is signed yet arguably none exist in the modern Premier League. Liverpool have one at a push.

There are all sorts of things fans want – nay demand – for their club.

Big, tough-tackling centre-back leaders who never make mistakes and can also bring the ball out of defence confidently and offer a threat from set-pieces.

Box-to-box midfielders who score and create goals while breaking up opposition attacks and covering every blade of grass.

Rapid full-backs who spend the whole game whipping in dangerous crosses while also somehow never being caught upfield.

Unproblematic billionaire owners who can make all your dreams come true for 20 years without pushing the world towards the brink of World War Three.

You know, that sort of thing.

But right at the top of that wishlist sits elite football’s modern unicorn: the 20-goal-a-season striker. It’s easy to see the temptation. It’s obvious to see how such a player would transform so many of your problems. Just go through the results list adding an extra goal to every other game and you’re going to find things looking far rosier than they do in the pesky and inconvenient real world.

“We just need to find a 20-goal striker,” they’ll say. And by “they”, we mean literally every one of us at some moment of weakness.

Yet they hardly exist. There are plenty of very good players who can have great campaigns and reach 20 goals. But in terms of players who will hit that mark consistently over an extended number of seasons, they are vanishingly rare.

There are precisely three current Premier League players who fit the bill of regularly reaching 20 goals: Harry Kane, who has done it five times; Mo Salah, whose penalty at Brighton meant he has done it four times; and Jamie Vardy, who has three.

Ranking all the 20+ goal-a-season strikers outside the top six

That list highlights some of the problems in searching for that “20-goal striker”, because all those players are freakish outliers in modern football. Salah may routinely hit 20 goals – and he’s likely to be the only player in the league to get there this season – but he isn’t actually a striker. Kane is a once-in-a-lifetime academy product who is definitely a striker but also so much more. And Vardy is a skittle-vodka-fuelled time-traveller throwback who somehow defies time and logic to continue racing in behind baffled defenders despite now being several hundred years old.

And those are the only ones left.

Their combined 12 efforts make up almost half of all 20-goal campaigns in the last eight Premier League seasons. And Sergio Aguero accounts for five of the other 13.

Salah tops the current season’s list with 20 and nobody else has more than 12 goals currently.

Kane, having endured by far his least successful season in front of goal since becoming an established Premier League force, has only 10 but is probably still the likeliest contender of the stragglers to reach 20.

The only two times he has previously failed to reach 20 goals have been 17- and 18-goal efforts in seasons disrupted by injury. This time around he has just 10 goals from 25 games, but his has been very much a season of two halves, Clive. Having scored one goal in 13 games at the start of the campaign while in a transfer huff, he has added nine in 12 since clearing his head. Ten goals in the next 12 doesn’t seem particularly outlandish for a player with such a very silly overall Premier League record.

But chances are he’ll fall short along with everyone else. So we’re looking at a season where the only “20-goal striker” isn’t in fact a striker.

I respect Harry Kane’s leadership with this, look at the way he took charge of the situation, this is why he’s England captain. Doors it is 😂😂😂

— Jules Breach (@julesbreach) March 11, 2022

It highlights a modern trend but never has it been more pronounced than this season. With rotation and increasingly fluid attacking threes, the “20-goal striker” has been replaced by the “30-goal attack”.

No Manchester City player has more than 10 league goals this season, but five have at least seven.

Arsenal had one of those precious 20-goal strikers in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, but he couldn’t stop them being rubbish and then he had a massive sulk.

The Gunners now spread their goals around. They don’t have a player yet in double figures, but Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli could well end up with 30 goals between them despite all missing chunks of the season. Arsenal also look distinctly less crap than at any other point in the last few years.

Even at Liverpool, Salah is just a brilliant outlying dafty who still manages to get 20 goals on his own despite not being the focal point of an absurd attack. Sadio Mane and Diogo Jota, with 12 each, sit joint second on the Premier League scoring chart.

Liverpool are, clearly, quite good but the top scorers list offers no real clue as to which sides are any good. The leading scorers from Manchester United, Watford, Brentford, Leeds, Arsenal and Crystal Palace all have nine goals. Nobody at Chelsea or West Ham has scored more than eight, the same as Norwich.

In summary, there are only nine players who have reached double figures for this season. And of those, only three – our old friends Kane and Vardy were joined by Ivan Toney this weekend – could uncomplicatedly be described as strikers and even then there are caveats.

Maybe it’s not “20-goal strikers” we don’t actually need any more. Maybe it’s the entire concept of strikers altogether. You don’t “Just need a 20-goal striker”; you just need three or four brilliant lads who can score and create 40 goals between them. So that’s much easier. Probably.