Shearer still the Premiership's ace marksman – but United stars dominate top ten league scorers
Alan Shearer goes into the New Year as the top goalscorer in the Premier League with 15 goals and that statistic sits very nicely alongside the fact that he is the Premier League's all-time leading goalscorer with a current total of 236, way ahead of second placed Andy Cole, who trails by a massive 79 goals.
Ruud van Nistelrooy may be the season's overall leading scorer, at present, but his total of 17 includes four Champions League goals, while Alan has a total of 16, with 15 of them coming in the Premier League.
I was interested to read the other day, ahead of Blackburn's visit to Newcastle, Rovers assistant-manager Tony Parkes say, of Alan Shearer: "His goals won us the title in 1995. Any team that signed him, and there were a few who wanted him, would have won the championship."
The statistics give heavy support for that statement as in 165 games for Blackburn, Shearer netted an astonishing 130 goals.
When Alan Shearer moved from Ewood Park to St James Park, in July 1996, he cost a record fee of £15 million. When Alf Common was transferred from Sunderland to Middlesbrough, in February 1905, his fee was a more modest one but it was the first four-figure transfer fee in English football, £1,000.
That was a mere seven months after he had joined Sunderland for a then record £750. Boro were accused of buying their way out of relegation trouble but it did work and in the following season Common scored 19 league goals in 36 appearances to keep the Ayresome Park club in Division One, on goal average.
Boro finished with the same points total as second bottom Nottingham Forest, 31, but with a goal average of 0.78 to Forest's 0.73.
George Camsell is a name not widely known outside the North East, but he will forever be remembered as the man who held the Football League scoring record, the season before it was broken by 'Dixie Dean. In 1926-27 Camsell was on fire as Boro raced to the Second Division championship. George scored 59 of the 122 goals scored by the team in that campaign but the following season Dean rattled in 60, in the First Division, only passing Camsells total with a hat-trick on the last day of the season, in 1928.
Dean hated the nickname 'Dixie' that is synonymous with the record scorer, he preferred his real name of William Ralph and he really should not have been able to play professional football after a serious road accident in 1926. Dean fractured his skull and jaw when his motorcycle was involved in a crash in June of that year but, by October, he had fought his way back to fitness and scored at Leeds to help Everton to only their second win of the season, 3-1.
Four of the current top ten Premier League goalscorers have, at one stage, been Manchester United players. Second in the standings is Andy Cole while Teddy Sheringham is fifth. Dwight Yorke, like Cole, now at Shearers old club Blackburn, is sixth and Dion Dublin, eighth was a United player in 1992-93.
Lurking outside the top ten are three other United players; 13th is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, 15th is Ryan Giggs and 19th is Paul Scholes.
