#premier-league-goals

#premier-league-goals

It was Michael Owen, another of England's greatest goalscorers, who expressed astonishment recently that Kane moved to Bayern at the start of the 2023-24 season just when he was closing in on Alan Shearer's record of 260 Premier League goals. In a sport drowning in statistics and increasingly in thrall to the cult of the individual rather than the spirit of the team, Owen's words struck a chord with many. Kane, they say, would have surpassed Shearer's mark by now had he stayed at Spurs.

On the face of it, it's not hard to see why Liverpool would want Alexander Isak. He will not turn 26 until later this month and has scored more than 20 Premier League goals in each of the past two seasons, something matched only by Erling Haaland. But he offers more than just goals; he's a very modern centre-forward. Thirty or 40 years ago, when 4-4-2 was still the dominant formation, strike pairings tended to come in two forms: