A striking shortage

Unpublished article written in May for guardian.co.uk/sport, based on previous musings.

Absences are, by their very nature, often conspicuous, yet one of the more arresting disappearances of this season has been thus far overlooked. For the first time since Brian Deane christened the Premier League way back in August 1992, the top ten of the scorers’ chart is devoid of an Englishman. To be precise, the top five has never wanted for a representative of the home nation until now, but in spite of Joleon Lescott’s heroics an area of shortage for England is looking more depleted than ever.

England’s striking indigence has come during a time of ostensible plenty for the top division. This, however, has been the year of Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Torres, Emmanuel Adebayor and Roque Santa Cruz, and the days when Teddy Sheringham, Les Ferdinand and Dean Holdsworth were the most lethal marksmen in the country now seem so far away as to be almost indiscernible. With Alan Shearer a familiar outline on the punditry landscape rather than atop the scoring tree, home-grown strikers are a rarer breed. In recent seasons, Darren Bent, Wayne Rooney and even James Beattie have flown the flag, but in 07/08 only Robbie Keane, whose 15 goals place him in joint fifth, can provide a presence even approaching ‘domestic’.

If this seems like an opportunity to indulge in jingoism, then it shouldn’t be. Whilst it may be true that such a paucity of goalscoring resources has occurred at the time of England’s most recent footballing ignominy, failure to qualify for Euro 2008, it is frustratingly parochial to blame the woes of the national team on the influx of foreign players. Besides, if we want to produce a Torres of our own, what better way than to be able to observe him against Premier League opposition week-in, week-out? The current situation provides Fabio Capello with plenty to mull over, though. After all, even catenaccio requires a goalscorer.

Despite the gloom, there is scope for some positivity. Since February, Michael Owen, currently out of favour with England’s professore, has scored nine times in just 14 appearances, helping to make up for his early season shortfall. A look at Opta’s statistical breakdowns is also instructive: Owen’s conversion rate of goals-to-shots is up at 23.4%, putting him on a par with Adebayor (23.1%) and Ronaldo (23.7%), and only fractionally behind Torres (25%). Gabriel Agbonlahor has continued to develop his eye for goal with 11 this year, and surely only his 12-game drought during November and December kept him out of the top ten; while Jermain Defoe appears reinvigorated down on the south coast, where he has scored eight times in 12 games for Pompey.

Perhaps most worryingly for Capello, the striking form of his apparent first-choice to lead the line, Wayne Rooney, is the least encouraging. With 12 goals, Rooney finished the season tied with Defoe as the Premier League’s 11^th top scorer, but this was his lowest return since his first season at Manchester United. His conversion ratio also pales in comparison to those mentioned before, with just 14.1% of his efforts finding the net. Peter Crouch, who not so long ago racked up 11 goals in 14 internationals has suffered in Torres's shadow, with just five league goals this term, and Everton’s Andy Johnson seems unlikely to once again hit the heights of scoring 21 times in a season, as he did with Crystal Palace.

Indeed, Johnson’s heroics for the relegated Eagles three seasons back are a vestige of a more innocent era, the like of which was embodied by Marcus Stewart scoring 19 goals to help newly promoted Ipswich to fifth in 00/01, and Kevin Phillips winning the golden boot the year before, with 30 goals for Sunderland. Such feats look anomalous now. The Premier League has become a boom-town marshalled by the big four, and it is conceivable, even likely, that the top four scorers this season would have been provided by United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, had Didier Drogba not endured such a truncated campaign – and none of them would have been English.

What next, then, for our prospects of unearthing a new Shearer, or pre-injury Owen? In the Championship, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake topped the scoring, but it is only two years since he was released by United without having made a first-team appearance. Phillips will return with West Brom for a last Premier League hurrah, but at 35 he is the oldest of a group of seasoned campaigners in the second tier which also includes Beattie. Fraizer Campbell could still make a mark, either with play-off hopefuls Hull, where he is on loan, or back at parent club United, while Capello will surely be monitoring Theo Walcott’s progress at Arsenal and possibly even the young Freddie Sears of West Ham. And maybe there are yet more rough diamonds down in the leagues’ lower reaches of whom we are currently only passing aware…

If there’s one silver lining to this typically English cloud, it is that the striker with the best conversion rate of those discussed here was born in east London. Jermain Defoe’s record of netting with 29.6% of his shots since joining Portsmouth hints at the pedigree he has long been associated with but seldom lived up to. Perhaps under the guidance of the most successful English manager this season, Harry Redknapp, there’s still hope for a prodigious scorer raised on our green and pleasant land.

Fox-in-the-box cull?

It looks as though this season's Premier League scoring charts will be without an English representative in the top ten for the first time since its 1993 inception (indeed, probably ever then, as foreign players have only really proliferated in Britain in the Premier League era).

With Wayne Rooney's goal yesterday (his 12th league strike), and John Carew's equaliser at Everton earlier today (13 goals, equal with Carlos Tevez and Yakubu), the Manchester United forward now stands level with Portsmouth's Jermain Defoe as the 11th highest scorer in the league. Kicking about just below are Gabriel Agbonlahor, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard - but up near the medal positions, as it were, there's a significant dearth of English names.

Is this down to imports crowding out home talent? I'm loathe to believe it. After all, with four tiers of professional football in England, as well as numerous semi-pro leagues, there is a much bigger pool for players to splash around in than most other countries, which usually have just two or three professional divisions.

Bringing me to the question of how we coach youngsters and inculcate within them both the requisite skill level and a mentality to succeed. Maybe more English footballers should play abroad, and learn about different iterations of the game; it's worth NBing that many of the great players of the modern era - Zidane, Ronaldo, Henry, Maradona, Bergkamp - have been itinerant performers of their craft. Only the Italians stay at home.

We could take, for example, Emmanuel Adebayor, who has scored 21 goals for Arsenal so far this season. Blessed with a gangling talent, but aware of the need to improve his technique, the Togolese, who arrived in England via France with little in the way of a reputation, has run his cotton knee-socks off all year, helping Emirates-goers to forget, perhaps for just a nanosecond, about a recently-departed No14. He may miss more easy ones than he scores, but his commitment and work ethic have been unimpeachable. If only we were describing Emile Heskey two seasons after he had moved to Liverpool...

But even if there has been a restriction of opportunities for young English strikers, should we not be able to bank on producing another Shearer or Owen, sooner or later? Of the successive heirs apparent, James Beattie, Andy Johnson, and Darren Bent have all struck rich veins of form only to end up mining in the relative wilderness; Beattie and Bent now sadly diminished, Johnson a mere stage hand to Yakubu's headline act. Only Defoe remains on the prowl at his new south coast hunting ground.

There are other bright, young things, however. Dean Ashton has at times provided a rough and ready simulacrum of Shearer's power and finishing, while his young team-mate, Freddie Sears looks to have a bit of nip about him. And then there is Theo Walcott, who has bagged half a dozen goals this season, despite spending much of his time on the wing. Manchester United's Hull loanee Fraizer Campbell is much touted; Blackburn's Matt Derbyshire much underrated. Otherwise, all we're left with is Kevin Phillip's vulpine grin - although that's still probably better than Heskey.

The January trolley dash

In a bout of Supermarket Sweeping that would make even Dale Winton blush, British clubs have already broken the spending record for the January transfer window - and there's still almost two weeks left.

While the 'Hey big spender' badge is currently held by Chelsea, with around 25 big ones being lashed on Sulky Nic and Serbian international Branislav Ivanovic, it is the clubs in the bottom third who have been most frantic in their hunt for hastily-scribbled signatures.

Paul Jewell will attempt to plug the holes in his leaking Derby ship by using Robbie Savage's ridiculous barnet - swept off a Blackburn barber's floor for £1.5m - and unknown Argentinian, Emmanuel Villa. Fulham have payed around 5 mil for Brede Hangeland and Eddie Johnson, centre-back and centre-forward respectively; whilst they're also duking it out with Wigan for the privilege of lining Watford's pockets with crisp fifties (£5m worth, no less) in return for the services of Marlon King.

Knocking all the above into a cocked hat, however, is Alex McLeish, with the Birmingham manager laying out a princely £5.75m for fellow Scot, Everton's James McFadden, and another million and a half to take Hibs' David Murphy south of the border. Bolton too, have expended a hefty whack (another 5 oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh pounds) on taking Matty Taylor from Fratton Park, and it seems that of those teams desperately trying to put some distance between themselves and relegation town, only Sunderland, Reading and arguably Boro are yet to really throw the chequebook at someone.

Doubtless, some of this thinking comes from casting back to West Ham's eventual survival last season, after the Hammers began January in the bottom three. In bringing in the likes of Lucas Neill, Matthew Upson, Luis Boa-Morte and Nigel Quashie, Alan Curbishley paid out over £10m, while the teams eventually o'erleapt by the east Londoners, Charlton and Sheffield United, spent relatively little.

Similarly, Harry Redknapp resurrected Pompey by completely restructuring the ailing side that his predecessor Alain Perrin had assembled. The signing of players like Sean Davis, Pedro Mendes and Noe Pamarot from Spurs, as well as club record buy Benjani, Dean Kiely in goal, and Wayne Routledge and Andres D'Allesandro on loan, boosted the south coast club, lifting them away from a relegation spot before the final game of the season, and sealing 'Arry's reputation as a master wheeler-dealer.

However, while these two examples showcase the January transfer window as an opportunity for clubs in trouble to mount a bid for safety swaddled in the protective layers of a heavy bankroll, it hasn't always been thus. West Brom, the only club to climb from that gravest of positions, bottom at Christmas, did it with barely a note changing hands (£1.5m to Burnley for Richard Chaplow being their sole expenditure) - although the canny free signing of Premiership old-stager, Kevin Campbell, and then-bright-young-thing, Kieran Richardson, on loan, certainly strengthened Brian Robson's hand.

In fact, back in those days, the window was merely another aspect of the league beholden to the tyranny of the big clubs. In 2004, the three biggest deals involved Arsenal (£17.5m for Jose-Antonio Reyes), Man U (£12m on Louis Saha) and Chelsea (£10m for Scott Parker); while Newcastle (who in the minds of the Toon are the biggest club on the disc) blew £9m on Jonathan Woodgate during the 2003 window and £8m on Jean-Alain Boumsong in 2005, topping the spending charts both times.

Of course, leaving the dance floor while the relegation tango is in full swing has always relied on elbow grease and teamwork - not something you can pick up in the January sales. West Ham ultimately had Carlos Tevez to thank for coming good during the second half of last season, while Redknapp managed to get large parts of his old Pompey squad working again, sprinkling some much-needed quality on top courtesy of the new chairman's wallet.

The likes of McFadden, Taylor and Savage will doubtless be joined by others, as the cash swilling around even the lower reaches of the Premier League is put to use by desperate owners. Whether this abundance of bunce will do anything more than keep a few more agents in pinstripe suits, I don't know.