English Football: The great decline of the number nine – where have the English strikers gone?

The decline in England’s strikers is down to several factors according to BBC pundit Chris Sutton, who himself surpassed the 10-goal mark in four separate Premier League campaigns, including a 25-goal haul for Norwich in 1993-94, and an 18-goal season with Blackburn that earned him a share of the Golden Boot in 1997-98.

One reason is the lack of appearances. From the table above, only Welbeck, Watkins and Calvert-Lewin have started more than three league matches this season, while Nketiah, Solanke and Barnes have yet to start a game.

“If you look at the 1990s, players like Jurgen Klinsmann and Dennis Bergkamp started arriving from abroad, but the overall number of foreign strikers was much lower,” Sutton explained.

“Shearer was the number one striker in my era, but if you go through the teams there were a lot of great English strikers like Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand, Andy Cole, Teddy Sheringham, Robbie Fowler, David Hurst – you can add Stan Collymore and Dion Dublin to that list too.

“There were an incredible number of them, even before Michael Owen arrived before the 1998 World Cup, and all different types of strikers as well.

“One difference is that they’ve all been playing every week, because how many English strikers start for their clubs in the Premier League now? That’s down to the quality that clubs can attract from elsewhere.

“The other change we’ve seen is the way teams are set up. I’m not saying everyone was playing a rigid 4-4-2 in my day, because that’s nonsense, but there are much fewer teams playing with two strikers now.

“In other ways, things have come full circle, because if you look at teams like Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United, the big number nine has come back into fashion. There are a lot of strikers in the Premier League, but not a lot of English strikers.”