Haaland closing in on 50 goals for the season. The list below shows how rare it is and how blessed we were to have Steve Bull.
(From the Gruniad)
Half-century heroics
“Erling Haaland is about to reach 50 goals for the season,” notes Victoria Osborn.
“Who was the last person to score reach that milestone in English football? Let’s limit it to the top four divisions.”
Haaland’s beastly productivity – 48 in 42 games before Wednesday’s match against Arsenal – is without precedent at the highest level of the modern English game. The last person to reach 50 goals in all competitions for a top-flight team was the legendary
Dixie Dean. He bashed in 63 goals for Everton in 1927-28: 60 in the league, three in the FA Cup. (Some sources say Dean scored 65, which includes two in the Charity Shield, but that match was played in October 1928.)
Clive Allen
famously scored 49 for Spurs in 1986-87, when he took advantage of the service of Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles and Chris Waddle among others. But we think the last man to hit 50 was the Wolves legend
Steve Bull, who did it in consecutive seasons at the back end of the 1980s: 52 goals in the old Division Four in 1987-88, 50 in Division Three in 1988-89.
Bull made his England debut against Scotland in May 1989, shortly after Wolves had been promoted to the second tier. England won 2-0, with Bull rifling the second past Jim Leighton.
These are all the examples we could find of players scoring 50 goals in an English season, most of which occurred in the aftermath of a
change in the offside law in 1925. Those in italics were not playing in the top flight:
63 Dixie Dean (Everton, 1927-28)
63 George Camsell (Middlesbrough, 1926-27)
58 Ted Harston (Mansfield, 1936-37)
58 Joe Payne (Luton, 1936-37)
54 Terry Bly (Peterborough, 1960-61)
52 Steve Bull (Wolves, 1987-88)
50 Vic Watson (West Ham, 1929-30)
50 Tom ‘Pongo’ Waring (Aston Villa, 1930-31)
50 Clarrie Bourton (Coventry, 1931-32)
50 Steve Bull (Wolves, 1988-89)
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