“I just read this article,” wrote Josh Lassman-Watts last week, “and one part stood out: ‘Tommy Walker from Hearts, who had scored 279 times in 253 matches for the Edinburgh side.’ So here’s my question: can anyone better that goals/games ratio for a single club over so many matches?”
For a start there’s some doubt over Walker’s record for Hearts. Matt Vallance points out that the reliable London Hearts website puts his scoring record as 276 goals in 491 games. Matt also points out the scoring feats of Ayr United’s Peter Price, who scored 213 goals in 199 games for the club.
“OK, most of his goals were scored in Scotland’s second tier, but, to score, consistently, at the rate of 1.07 goals per game, indicates a player who knew where the goals lay,” writes Matt. “His scoring streak included a spell when, in two back-to-back seasons, he scored 105 goals. He had a spell in Australia, scoring a goal with his first touch, and a hat-trick inside half an hour of his debut, but, he couldn’t settle down under and returned to Ayr, where he was for many years a popular local bus driver, then taxi driver. OK, he was no Tommy Walker, one of the all-time greats, but, a better and more-consistent goal scorer.”
Cases can be made for plenty of others – Pelé, Romario and Gerd Müller for example – but the two leading contenders seem to be Sporting Lisbon’s Fernando Peyroteo and Slavia Prague’s Josef Bican.
All stats from 80-odd years ago obviously need to be taken with a pinch of salt but Peyroteo, it is claimed, scored 541 goals in 334 games for Sporting in the 1930s and 1940s (or, alternatively, 330 goals in 197 games) , while Bican bagged 534 in 274 official games for Slavia in the same era.
Not all great goalscorers hail from the distant past, however: Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 326 goals for Real Madrid in just 315 games.
BIG TEAMS FROM SMALL TOWNS (2)
Last week we looked a some of football’s most successful towns, and this week the Knowledge inbox has been positively bulging with more.
“Rosenborg from Trondheim,” suggests Runar Meland. “23 times Norwegian champions, including 2015. Champion 13 years in row from 1992-04. In Champions League 10 times. Reached quarter-finals in 1997 after beating AC Milan at San Siro in the last game of the group stage. Won their group in 1999. The only team to beat Real Madrid in the 1998-99 tournament. Population in the town has grown from 130,000 to 180,000 since beginning of their successful period.”
“I do think Ipswich Town deserve a mention,” writes Phil Nelson (among others). “League winners in the 1961-62 season, FA Cup winners 1977-78 season and most notably Uefa Cup winners in 1980-81 and by my reckoning the only town to win a major European honour.”
“I would suggest the town of Stretford is the most successful as it is the home of Manchester United,” writes Andrew Scanlan, not exactly getting into the spirit of the question. “Followed by West Bridgford, which is the home of Nottingham Forest.”
“On an international level this has to be Bayer Leverkusen for winning the Uefa Cup back in 1987 with a current population of about 160,000,” writes David Seyfarth. “Looking at the Bundesliga I throw in Kaiserslautern with their latest title in 1998 with 98,000. In the Champions League the smallest town has to be Gus Hiddink’s Eindhoven in 1987-88 with an actual population of 220,000.”
“Unirea Urziceni, trained by Dan Petrescu, won the Romanian Championship in 2009,” writes Cristian Aszalos. “Urziceni is a town located near Bucharest, with a population of around 14,000 people. And maybe you can also put Guingamp, from France, in this category. A town with a population of 7,400 have won the French Cup twice.”
And finally: “Glossop is the smallest town in England to have a team in the top flight,” notes Oliver Bootth.
PSV’S WINLESS WONDERFUL 1988
“St Patrick’s Athletic just won the 2015 League of Ireland Cup without beating a league team,” wrote Sean DeLoughrey last week. “They received a bye in the first round, beat non-league Crumlin United 4-1 in the second round (yes, the League of Ireland Cup includes a small number of invited non-league teams), then beat Cork City, Shamrock Rovers and Galway, each on penalties. Winning a League Cup without beating a league team must be a first?”
It is stretching it a touch (well, a lot) but Rob Moline suggests a near-answer. “PSV won the European Cup without beating a European team in the year that they won it [1988],” he writes. “And they actually played three European teams over five games. I thought that was a pretty good effort.
“Though they did have wins in the competition, in the first half of the season in September, October and November 1987. Even so, more than the last six months in the competition without a win but ultimately victorious nevertheless: Quarter-finals: Bordeaux 1-1 PSV, PSV 0-0 Bordeaux; Semi-finals: Real Madrid 1-1 PSV, PSV 0-0 Real Madrid; Final: PSV 0-0 Benfica aet (6-5 on penalties).”
KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE
“Is it really true that a Romanian side once built a moat filled with crocodiles to stop the crowd from invading the pitch?” wondered Ben Evans back in the sepia-tinged days of 2006.
Incredibly, Ben, this snappy piece of hooligan deterrence actually was planned. Back in 2003, fourth-division Steaua Nicolae Balcescu found themselves in a quandary: Romanian leagues chiefs were threatening the club with expulsion following a series of pitch invasions and violent outbreaks. What was the club to do? Perimeter fencing? Increased stewarding? Not quite.
Chairman Alexandra Cringus came up with the ‘innovative’ concept of creating a moat surrounding the pitch, packed with fully-grown crocodiles. “This is not a joke,” insisted Cringus. “We can get crocodiles easy enough and feed them on meat from the local abattoir. The ditch is planned to be wide enough that no one could manage to jump over it. Anyone who attempted to do so would have to deal with the crocs. I think that the problem of fans running on to the pitch will be solved once and for all.” You don’t say.
And what of players tumbling off the field and into the watering hole? Cringus planned to create the moat far enough from the pitch to prevent said calamity, yet not forgetting about the crocs; electric pipes were to be installed in the water to keep it heated during cold weather. The last we heard of the tale was that local authorities were considering the club’s proposal.
For thousands more sepia-tinged questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive or pick up a copy of More Knowledge from the Guardian Bookshop.
Can you help?
Enough about towns succeeding. What about cities failing?” growls Andy Wainwright. “I saw recently that currently Sheffield is the largest place in Europe without a top division side – is this true? If not what is? Of course Sheffield has trophies in the bag, so second question: what is the largest conurbation that has not won their nation’s top league or cup? Suspect this needs to be limited to countries where footy is the so called national sport (otherwise the answer might be a long list of Chinese/US cities). In the UK I would guess Bristol …”
“Which team has had the worst start to a season before going on to win their respective league title?” wonders Richard Wyatt.
“I seem to remember there being an episode of Cilla’s Surprise Surprise, where Mark Robins was there to make an old Norwich bloke happy and surprise him,” writes Michael Heron. “This must have been around the 1992-93 season when we were good and Mark was banging in the goals. Did this really happen or just a figment of my imagination?”
“After watching the recent BBC documentary on the purchase of Salford City by ‘the Class of ‘92’,” begins Chris Smith, “it occurred to me that, given the owners’ ambitions for the club to rise through the leagues, and also given many of the owners are actively finding their feet in coaching and/or management, it is hardly beyond the realms of possibility that one of the Neville brothers (coach with England and assistant manager at Valencia), Giggs (assistant manager at Manchester Utd) or Scholes (linked with the manager’s position at Oldham) could end up managing against the team they own. Has this ever happened before, and are there any rules to prevent it on grounds of conflict of interest?”
“Is there anyone who has a statue outside two different club stadiums?” writes Martin Fleet. “I know you have Bobby Moore outside West Ham and Wembley but would love to know if someone is loved as much by two different sets of club fans as to been given that honour?”
“I saw a stat during last night’s CSKA vs Man Utd game about the CSKA striker, Ahmed Musa, touching the ball once in the first 15 mins – which was when he kicked off,” writes Mike Dunn. “This got me thinking – since the advent of these new fangled in game stats, has any outfield player ever gone an entire game without touching the ball? I can’t imagine they have, so if not what is the longest period between touches, or are there any stats on the most ineffective player during the course of a game.”
“Has there ever been an instance where two players have lined up against one another in non-league football only to do so again in the top division?” wonders Tom Ayres. “Even better – any internationals where former non-leaguers have gone toe to toe again? I was hoping Jamie Vardy and Chris Smalling may have crossed swords when playing for Stocksbridge Park Steels and Maidstone United respectively but this doesn’t look likely.”
“The pessimistic Leicester fan in the office is not being carried away by their recent form and asked which team in the Premier League has been the one relegated from the highest position at Christmas?” writes Ashley Braithwaite.
“I seem to remember that about 10 years ago, in a Mexican league match, a player on a yellow card was substituted,” writes Phil Davison. “He took too long leaving the pitch and received a second yellow for time wasting, and hence a red. The player due to come on couldn’t enter the field of play. Is my memory deceiving me? Has it happened elsewhere?”
“I was looking at the 1983-84 Alliance Premier League season, and noticed that 17 of the 22 teams are no longer in the division,” writes Steve Whittaker. “Four have gone bust and reformed, one arguably split in two and one merged into another, whilst the rest have been promoted or relegated (sometimes multiple times). Is there any league in Britain or abroad whose membership has changed so much in 30 years and yet the league itself has retained its place in the pyramid?”
“Salford City’s Richie Allen had the ball in his possession for 19 seconds prior to scoring against Notts County in the FA Cup on Friday (albeit including a one-two with a team-mate, which may invalidate it for the purposes of this question),” begins Tom Williams. “Which player holds the record for holding onto the ball for the longest time prior to scoring (not including time spent waiting to take a set-piece, for example)? A cursory look at some of the great solo goals leaves George Weah as a potential alternative candidate, having had the ball at his feet for 15 seconds as he charged down the pitch to score against Verona for Milan in 1996.”
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