There may be only one player who can win the Golden Boot this season – but you can find a value bet if you look hard enough, says Tony Cascarino.
If you like a bet, the Premiership Golden Boot race makes grim reading these days. At the time of writing, Thierry Henry had scored a remarkable tally of 15 league goals for the season and then the rest were lagging way behind – nobody was anywhere near him.
Hardly ideal for punters, is it? As a result of his superiority Henry is best-priced 1/5 to finish as the Premiership’s top scorer and we’re only half-way through the season. Next best? Ruud van Nistelrooy at a massive 14/1!
Obviously the value has drained right out of the market. It begs the question: what is wrong with strikers these days? Why are the rest of the so-called top-class goalscorers unable to compete with Arsenal’s turbocharged Frenchman?
I would say there are multiple reasons, rather than just one. Firstly, there is simply no such thing as a strike partnership these days. You could argue that maybe Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Mark Viduka at Middlesbrough are a genuine duo up front, but the jury is still out on them as they’ve scored just 12 goals between them at the time of writing.
What partner?
No other partnership really exists. Nine times out of ten Chelsea play with one up front and they share the goals – Duff and Lampard have four each and Terry, Tiago and Robben all have three. Look at Everton – they have a system where they play just Marcus Bent up front and aren’t worried who scores the goals. They remind me of France’s World Cup-winning team of 1998, which won the trophy without a decent centre-forward.
A lot of the top strikers in the Premiership have been injured – Manchester United lost Ruud van Nistelrooy for a while, Alan Shearer had time on the sidelines, and Didier Drogba missed two months of action. Also, Djibril Cisse could have scored goals for Liverpool but he is out for the season with a broken leg.
The goals tally in general is down now on what it used to be in my playing days. In the 1984-85 season, the average number of goals in the top flight was 2.79 per game. This season so far, the average is 2.62 per game.
There were also a lot more players in my day who could be relied upon to score 15 to 20 goals a season because most teams looked to one or two players to grab the lion’s share of their total tally. Ian Rush and John Aldridge at Liverpool at their peak could be relied upon for 20 goals a season; Clive Allen at Tottenham Hotspur and Gary Lineker at Everton and then Spurs were similarly prolific. You had other names, too, like Kerry Dixon and Tony Cottee, who would pop up with decent goals tallies every season. Even John Barnes would weigh in with 12 goals or more at Liverpool. It seems to me we’ve lost that nowadays – you can pick only a handful of players who will definitely make it into double figures.
If you are on a scoring run, you feel like you will score every game – if you’re on a bad run, you feel like you will never score again. Scoring goals is still one of the hardest jobs in football. That’s why strikers are paid so handsomely for it.
Teddy Sheringham was a great example of how to handle the pressure – he was expert at popping up with important goals at crucial moments. As a striker, you know that if you are losing 1-0 with 10 minutes to go you have to take any chance you get. It is down to you whether the players will be celebrating in the bath afterwards or heading home on the bus in an air of despondency. Teddy was superb in those situations – never more so than scoring that injury-time equaliser that propelled Manchester United to victory in the 1999 Champions League final.
Help is afoot
There’s no better feeling than saving your team in dramatic circumstances. I remember playing at Marseille, when I was probably at my most confident, and team-mates would look at me if we were losing as if to say: ‘We need you to get us out of the shit here’. It’s a great ego boost if things are going well. But I’ve had team-mates thinking the opposite, too. You know when you’re losing, they’re looking at you thinking: ‘This big lump ain’t gonna get us out of the mire’.
I don’t think anybody can catch Henry now. The only way any of the other Premiership strikers will get near him is if he’s out injured. But thankfully, you can have a bet on players to finish second or third in the Golden Boot race – Sporting Index offers an index which awards players points depending where they finish in the race.
I think Jermain Defoe must have a chance. He has plenty of goals in him – he is such a natural finisher. He does need to form a better partnership with either Keane or Kanoute and he still has work to do by linking up with team-mates. But right now, he’d be my bet to push Henry hardest of all.
