There’s no disputing the fact that Erling Haaland is on fire. But, surprisingly, despite scoring eight goals in his last two games, the Manchester City forward isn’t actually the most in-form striker in English football right now.
No, that title goes to a lad called Eddie Simon.
“Who the heck is that?” I hear you cry. And you would be forgiven for doing so as Eddie is hardly what you would describe as a household name. In fact, he plays for Walton and Hersham FC in the eighth tier of the English pyramid, which is not exactly a level of football that rivals the Champions League for television coverage.
But while his surroundings may be a little less glamourous than those enjoyed by the Manchester City player, Eddie’s ability to find the back the net with regular ease is strikingly similar. In fact, in an incredible burst of form, Simon has blasted hat-tricks in his last four games, making him the first player to achieve that feat in any of the top eight English divisions. Ever.
Not a bad record, considering Eddie is, like all his team mates, just a part-timer. In fact, when he isn’t firing Walton and Hersham to glory, he is focusing on fillings and extractions in his day job as a London dentist. Fair to say that, in both jobs, he is good at bringing a smile to people’s faces...
Meanwhile, if you get a minute, you should actually look into the recent history of Walton and Hersham because it really is an utterly fascinating story.
Back in 2019, after relegation to the ninth tier of the pyramid, the floundering club was taken over in an attempt to return it to its long-gone glory days. However, rather than being bought by a rich individual as a plaything or a local businessman as a way of flexing their muscle among the local community, Walton and Hersham was bought by a consortium of local teenagers.
Yep, while most people their age were busy getting drunk at the pub or button-bashing their Playstations, these boys decided to band together to buy the club they loved. They acquired all the shares in Walton and Hersham for a rather reasonable £100, but then the group, most of whom were university students, each dipped into their savings to stick £2,000 pounds into a kitty to help drag the team out of its slump.
And frankly speaking, despite having to deal with things like a global pandemic, having no players on the books when they all left after relegation, and not having any kit to play in 24 hours before their first match as owners, they have done rather well.
The club has already been promoted once under their leadership – back to the eighth tier of the pyramid – and have a good chance of going up again this season. With just a handful of games to go, they are currently second in the Isthmian South Central League thanks, in no small way, to the aforementioned Eddie Simon’s fetish for hat-tricks.
And a second promotion would be a rather splendid achievement for a bunch of kids who each have unpaid but highly committed roles in the running of the club which they fit in around their studies or real jobs.
In a way, it’s rather telling about modern society that we have heard so much about the Wrexham takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney over the last couple of years, but almost nothing about this far more dramatic fairy tale unfolding a bit further down the leagues.
But if Walton and Hersham keep on climbing up the leagues, I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about this magnificent seven in the years to come.
Maybe they will get their own Disney reality show too...
An era when it’s easy to score
Over the international break, Harry Kane became England’s undisputed goal king, tucking away goal number 54 for his country against Italy, and then slotting home number 55 in the win over Ukraine.
Those strikes took him two clear of Wayne Rooney and emphatically confirmed Kane as England’s greatest ever scorer. And, at the age of 29, you wouldn’t bet against him adding another 20 or 30 before hanging up his boots and setting a total that is going to be nearly impossible to beat.
However, like most leading goalscorers of the current generation, Kane’s total has been helped by two things: firstly that modern football is a much easier game, and secondly that many games these days come against ‘lesser’ opposition.
Addressing the second point first, of Kane’s 55 goals for his country, way more than 50 per cent of them have come against teams like Andorra, San Marino, Malta, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, Lithuania and Panama. That number of ‘easy’ goals could be as high as 75 per cent to be honest, depending on how you rate teams like Scotland, Senegal and Switzerland.
50% of Kane’s goals have come against teams like Andorra, San Marino and Malta
That isn’t his fault, of course, he can only score against the teams he is facing. But it does make you wonder if modern-day strikers don’t find it considerably easier to find the back of the net than their predecessors simply because of the amount of games they play against smaller teams.
Bobby Charlton, for example, is third on England’s list of all-time top scorers with 49. However, the majority of his goals came against the likes of Italy, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; a much tougher level of opposition than small countries that didn’t even exist when he was playing.
And that’s before we get on to those other factors: like the state of modern pitches compared to the farmer’s fields of yesteryear; and the fact that, when Charlton was banging them in, the match ball was made out of cement wrapped in lead; and that he had to play wearing deep sea diver’s boots.
Again, I am not belittling Kane or even previous record-holder Rooney. Quality players both and worthy of their time at the top of the pile.
But I suspect if you had a player like Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Nat Lofthouse – and possibly even Gary Lineker – playing in a modern team, with the modern set-up and with the low level of opposition they face, they would easily be capable of replicating the exploits of Messers Kane and Rooney.
This isn’t meant to offend modern players. Just an observation that things are very different these days, and, while records don’t lie, they don’t always give you the full story.
E-mail: James@quizando.com
Twitter: @maltablade