Goalscoring benchmark has just got Messi for the likes of Salah and Kane
LIONEL MESSI and Cristiano Ronaldo have a lot to answer for.
They’ve changed the expectation on every striker at every level. Forever.
When I was playing, if you could score more than a goal every two games, you were considered a top-class goalscorer. That was always the ratio people recognised as the benchmark.
It was the same for all the great strikers.
Rush, Law, Lineker, Shearer. A bit better than one in two – and you were the best.
There were always the odd exceptions – players like Jimmy Greaves and Dixie Dean – but it was pretty much a hard-andfast rule.
That was, until Messi and Ronaldo ripped up the rule book!
Now, if you don’t score every game, then people start asking questions. Serious questions. Which, in my eyes as a striker, is grossly unfair because those two are phenomenal – some would say unnatural – and you really shouldn’t be judging any striker by what they do.
Harry Kane has been getting some stick lately. He’s on his longest run without an England goal and there are questions being asked. But they’re only being asked because of the standards he has set.
And I can tell you this, no one who works with him will be worried. Not Mauricio Pochettino, not Gareth Southgate. Why? Because he’s still getting in there, still having chances.
He hit the bar against Croatia, buried another that was ruled just offside. That shows a striker who has not lost confidence, still believes in his ability.
And that’s what being a top class striker is all about. You know it will come. The worst run I ever had playing for Liverpool – when I wasn’t coming off the bench for just a few minutes – was seven matches without a goal, which was back in 1998.
It actually came off the back of a hat-trick at Villa in November and then I didn’t score again until an FA Cup game at Port Vale in January ’99.
I mention all this because, at the time, it clearly didn’t weigh on me enough to recall it until now. It’s about composure. On a decent run, it’s all done without really thinking, you just somehow know you’re going to be calm, see the picture of how it is happening around you – and how the ball is going in the net.
Yet, when that anxiety arrives after a few games without a goal, the composure goes. And that’s when you have to fall back on all the training you’ve done, the work you’ve put in, the belief that builds up.
It has always done my head in when people say I’m a natural, as though I never had to work at anything.
I worked by b***s off all the time, from when I was seven in the local park. It looked natural because I practised so much it became instinctive. And that work is what you fall back on. It’s the same for Kane, same for Mo Salah. I’ve watched both closely in recent weeks and I can tell you they don’t have big problems. They’ll be back scoring for their clubs again. At times like these, you listen to advice from those around you. I had Ian Rush and John Aldridge giving me advice. During a lean spell, they’d say, ‘Don’t panic, stay calm, just do what you’ve learned to do, trained to do. Believe in yourself’. Because it happens to every single striker who ever played the game. It’s common sense, and that’s what I’ll say to Salah when I see him. It’s a bit of a cliche, really, but it’s when they’re not getting into positions, when they’re hiding and not taking responsibility, that’s when you have to worry. And neither is doing that. Not that Mo will need my advice. He scored a great goal from a corner for Egypt and you just know that will give him the sort of lift he’s been looking for. And, anyway, I watched him against City, and he was still making the runs, still getting into the positions, still creating real danger and scaring the City defence. It will come again for both of them.
The problem they have is that they both put themselves into that Messi-ronaldo bracket by getting close to the goal-a-game level last season. Yet that’s unsustainable for the very best... unless you play for Barca or Madrid, with a team on a different level to everyone else.
It will be interesting to see what Ronaldo does over the course of a season now he’s at Juve. I suspect it won’t be a goal a game and not just because he’s getting older.
I’m not saying it’s a one-off, but, generally speaking, I just don’t think you should be comparing anyone to those two.
Salah will get goals this season. If he doesn’t get 45, then it doesn’t mean he’s a worse player, just that things have levelled off. Same with Kane.
I fancy him to break his England duck soon and to be one of this season’s top scorers.
That’s because he’s a topclass goalscorer – who will end up with more than a goal every other game in his career.
Not bad going, by anyone’s standards – except Messi and Ronaldo!