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Here’s your list of Golden Boot winners since the inception of the Premier League. And here’s a list of facts:
There have only been 7 players who have scored 30+ goals in a single season since the start of the Premier League.
There have only been three players who increased their output the year after they won the Golden Boot.
There have only been five players in 20 years who have not seen a drop in their output the year after they won the Golden Boot.
The average drop in output is -9 goals.
Before 2001-2002 the Golden Boot winner’s team finished in the top four just 6 times.
Since 2001-2001 every Golden Boot winner’s team has finished in the top four, both in the season they win the award and the season after.
Only one Golden Boot winner’s team has been relegated the year after they had a player win Golden Boot
Only two players have won Golden Boot in three consecutive seasons: Shearer and Henry.
Only one player has won Golden Boot four out of five seasons: Thierry Henry.
Theirry Henry would have won five consecutive Golden Boot awards had he scored just one more goal in 2002/2003 instead of getting 23 assists.
Yes, you read that right. 24 goals, 23 assists in 2002/2003. I’m counting that as a fucking Golden Boot.
Thierry Henry is the only player to win Tim’s Golden Boot award for 5 consecutive years.
There was only one Golden Boot winner who left England the year after he won the Golden Boot (Jimmy Floyd Hassleebaienekes)
There have only been 7 seasons in which the team with the Golden Boot winner did better the year after their player won the Golden Boot
Only two of those teams’ seasons coincide with the player doing as well or better than the season before, but JFH doesn’t count because he went to Athletico Madrid.
Arsenal v. AC Milan in the Champions League, Tuesday night, cold, North London. And with a four goal deficit to overcome in the second leg it seemed like a good number of the home crowd didn’t want to go to the game. So, I lucked into a ticket that got me as close as I had ever been to the manager and the team. Seated just a few rows back I was close enough smell Marouane Chamakh’s hair gel, to see the injured players up close, and most importantly to hear what Arsene Wenger and Pat Rice were yelling at the team.
If you remember the game, Arsenal went up 3-0 in the first half and defensively there wasn’t much for the Gunners to do as Milan were more than happy to soak up Arsenal’s pressure. Confident in their experienced defenders and with van Bommel in front breaking play up.
Still, there were two nervy moments in that first half: Robinho nearly made the tie moot with a wide open shot that he blazed well wide in the minute after Koscielny scored the opener; and El Shaarawy almost scored in the final minute of the half. Both shots came off defensive errors which were so glaring that every fan in the stadium’s butthole clenched simultaneously.
But not Pat Rice. Instead of clenching, he jumped up and started barking instructions at the defense. In fact, throughout the game he was up and talking to his defensive captain (Thomas Vermaelen pictured below) telling him how to keep the shape defensively, actively telling the team to compress the field, and various other tactical instructions.
I say all this to hopefully put to bed this pernicious lie that Pat Rice was just the guy who puts the cones out or a “yes man” as some like to paint him. Pat Rice was an active part of crafting Arsenal’s defense, through both the good times and the bad, both on the pitch and off. And I think he would be the first to admit that the last five years have been quite frustrating.
What happened behind the scenes between Arsene and Rice was something shrouded in great mystery. This led to the speculation that Wenger was some great dictator and that Rice was just a yes man. So great was this mythology that respected people, people connected to the club, pronounced loudly that Steve Bould wouldn’t sign on to be Arsene’s number two because
One, he wants to be allowed to coach, as opposed to put out cones. Two, he wants to retain employment once Wenger does finally go. And on £20,000 a week who can blame him. If Bould were allowed to actually get his hands on the defensive side of the team’s game, there would be some merit in giving him a shot. But the man obviously knows the situation he would be getting himself into and doesn’t want to work under those conditions.
The mythology in that one paragraph is so dense that it’s nearly impossible to unpack it all. Just think about how he slips so easily from “the guy who puts out cones” to “defensive demi-god” in just a few words. Somewhere between “cone placer” and “religious revolutionary” lies the truth.
Of course Arsene Wenger has a way that he wants to play football. All managers do. And it’s probably true that Pat Rice taught the team to play defense the Arsene Wenger way, but I’m certain that Pat injected his own philosophy into the mix. You don’t play football and coach for 44 years by being a husk of a human being.
It’s also probably true that Steve Bould will bring in some new ideas and from what I’ve read is a bit more of a commanding figure among the players. In that AC Milan game I actually got frustrated with the players because Pat was telling them what to do (and he was right) and they clearly weren’t listening. I asked the guy next to me and he said that it’s always like that “they never listen to Pat”. If Steve Bould can just do that, keep the players like Alex Song and Thomas Vermaelen from thinking that they are Eden Hazard and Samuel Eto’o, that would be a huge improvement.
But is Steve Bould the “defensive messiah” that Arsenal need? Not so much, according to Jaime Sanderson of YoungGunsBlog — another well respected journalist with many connections to the club and who followed the Arsenal youth set up for many years. He tweeted this morning:
Final point on Bould: don’t think he’s answer to ‘defensive coach’. U18′s ship silly goals and lack organisation on set pieces. Familiar?
Damn, looks like we are getting another “yes man” who will “put out cones” and not do anything to “shore up the defense”.
I think the only answer is to get Martin Keown in. No wait, Tony Adams.
Yeah, Tony. He’s the defensive messiah that Arsenal need.
I guess it’s kind of good that there’s no transfer news this morning. Because then we all have nothing to moan about!
Wait, except the lack of transfer news. Catch 22.
HA HA!
LOL!
Meh.
Really, I have to figure out what I’m going to do this summer with all the players that Arsenal are going to be linked to.
I could do a statistical analysis of each player and show what they could bring to the squad but that could get overwhelming, pretty quickly. After all, the Sun linked Arsenal with Dempsey and Hoilett yesterday and I mean, really, do you want to see Junior Hoilett’s numbers?
Ugh. You do.
Well, he’s a good dribbler. In fact, he averages more dribbles per game than any other player in the League at 2.6. That’s 0.1 more dribbles per game than Victor Moses and Luis Suarez. The problem with Hoilett is that dribbling is all he’s good at. His crosses aren’t particularly good, his passes aren’t particularly good, and he’s Canadian. And we all know what that means!
There’s a weird thing about some people and how they value attacking players. It seems to be based mostly on how well they dribble. Think about all the accolades that Moses and Suarez have received this season. I happen to think Suarez is not a very good player, sure, he can and does dribble, but he’s a terrible person, a massive liability in terms of diving, and also a cunt of a teammate. He’s always throwing his hands in the air whenever he doesn’t get everything his way and I hate playing with those guys.
I should create a metric called “guys Tim would play with”. Wait. No. No I shouldn’t.
Victor Moses? Well, his stats are similar to Suarez but he’s never struck me as an utter, utter cocksandwich. And then there’s Junior Hoilett. Good dribbler, but goes missing in games and has a very Canadian demeanor. You guys know what I mean!
If there was a guy I want to play with it would be Moses. He’ll lead you to the promised land… and then be banished from entering it himself because he questioned God.
Hrm… I’d also play with Dempsey.
There are other dribblers out there. Former Chelsea player Gökhan Töre plays in the Bundesliga and leads the whole world in dribbling with something like a dribble a minute. I don’t know about him because he plays in Germany but I do think that Arsenal could probably buy him for a few dollars less than any of the above mentioned players. I bet he would even be cheaper than Hoilett.
Meanwhile, people are busy making “Welcome to Arsenal” skill compilation videos to post on YouTube for both Vanilla Manilla and Klaus Jan Vertonghenen both of which are hilarious. The M’Vila video is 11 minutes of him passing sideways and backwards, for France. Well, I assume it’s 11 minutes of that because I turned it off after 30 seconds of him passing sideways and backwards, for France.
And I like France!
The Vertonghen video must be like some kind of reverse psychology, right? Like, it’s a plant by a Spurs fan who really wants him to go to Arsenal instead of Spurs? Because if scoring goals off flat-footed headers and free kicks that dribble over the line after being deflected are considered “highlights” I’d hate to spend even a single night watching the Eredivisie. The only conclusions I came away with watching that video of his top 10 goals is 1) that the Dutch division is so poor that this lumbering center half is free to roam up front like a sort of Alex Song/Chamakh defensive-center forward type and 2) that we should pray that Arsenal never buy any Dutch goal keepers.
Just kidding, I’m sure that Jan Vertonghen is exactly the guy we need to be the 6th and decisive center half at Arsenal. Also, apparently, he’s going to be backup to Song in midfield and, conveniently, Marouane Chamakh at center forward. I wonder what his dribbling numbers are? Maybe he could fill in for Hoilett on Arsenal’s left wing?
I think the Canadian air has done something to me.
