Every football fan dreams of that striker who can come up with the goods on a regular basis, the one who bang in goals for fun and sometimes, just sometimes hits their peak at the club you support.
We’ve taken another look through the stats for Europe’s top five leagues to find out if any of the big name players are producing that much sought after, but rarely achieved goal-a-game ratio.
?? La Liga
Even in a season where we’ve seen less of him gracing the stadiums of La Liga due to his struggle with injury early in the campaign, Lionel Messi has proven once again that he can do more with less.
Messi’s 19 league goals have come across 22 appearances and 1,890 minutes of football. Perhaps it’s his form from dead ball situations that has helped him reach the top of our minutes per goal list for the division – with 4 coming from free-kicks and a further 3 from the spot.
??????? Premier League
Manchester City’s ever reliable frontman, Sergio Agüero has also had a fruitful campaign, scoring 16 goals despite only appearing in Pep Guardiola’s starting XI for 17 games. Taking into account the minutes he’s actually spent on the field, he is the first striker on this list to break the goal-a-game mark.
In fact, it’s been a record breaking season for the Argentine. His hat-trick against Aston Villa back in January saw him surpass Thierry Henry’s record for Premier League goals scored by an overseas player. It also set the new standard for the number of hat-tricks scored by any one player in the Premier League era.
Agüero now has 180 Premier League games in total, which puts him fourth in the all-time scoring chart.
?? Ligue 1
French boy wonder, Kylian Mbappé can do little wrong at PSG. Already a World Cup winner with multiple domestic titles and individual honours under his belt – he’s even beaten the rumours that he had fallen ill to the coronavirus earlier this month.
And although restricted, in terms of starts because of PSG’s embarrassment of riches in attacking positions, Mbappé has still scored 18 times in 20 appearances – a goal coming for every 81 minutes he has spent on the pitch.
?? Serie A
Atalanta’s Colombian international, Luis Muriel is somewhat of a super sub and comes out here as having the best minutes per goal of any player in Europe’s top five leagues.
Profiting from his side’s ability to dismantle Serie A defences (Atalanta have scored 7 on three separate occasions during the season), Muriel has scored 13 goals in just 918 minutes of football – with 7 of those coming from the bench.
Elsewhere in the league, Lazio’s Ciro Immobile has also scored at a rate of more than one a game, in terms of minutes played. We profiled his statistical battle against the league’s other top scorer, Cristiano Ronaldo in an article – here.
?? Bundesliga
Until his unfortunate injury last month, Robert Lewandowski had been up to his usual tricks – scoring goal after goal in the Bundesliga.
At that point, he had played more minutes than any of the other players who’ve topped our charts for the different divisions here – but he’d also scored more goals – 25 at a rate of one every 81 minutes. That’s good, even by his own extremely high standard.
Our stats for the Bundesliga do of course miss one player who’s recently joined the league. And if you know the FotMob back story originating in Norway, you’ll know he’s a particular favourite of ours! ???
Erling Braut Haaland moved to Borussia Dortmund in January and following the resumption of the season after the winter break, went about scoring 9 goals in his first 512 minutes for the club. A hat-trick came in the first half-hour of his debut against Augsburg!
So, why doesn’t Norway’s new hero appear in our table? He simply hasn’t started enough games or played enough minutes to appear. Yet!
If you fancy a deep dive into any of the countless statistics we cover on various league around the world, simply search by country, select a league profile and swipe right to the stats tab.
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