We are not yet halfway through the season but already there is a possibility that Leicester City's Jamie Vardy could end up as the season's leading scorer. That would make him the first Englishman to do so since the 1999/2000 season. Here are the last five English strikers to finish top of the charts.
Kevin Phillips (Sunderland, 99/00 – 30 goals)
Like Vardy, Phillips also began his career with a non-league side and actually played with Vardy for Leicester in 2013-14. That haul secured him the European Golden Boot and he remains the only Englishman to win that. Vardy will want to make a greater international impact though: Phillips did not score in his eight England appearances.
Dion Dublin (Coventry City, 97/98 – 18 goals)
If Dublin was the answer, then the question could only have been which season were the Premier League’s defences at their worst. To be fair, he was joint top-scorer with two other Englishmen Michael Owen and Chris Sutton. To be fairer, Dublin was pretty prolific, but never shed the impression that he was a centre-half-turned-striker.
Alan Shearer (Newcastle, 96/97, 25 goals)
If you look for a definition of a typical English centre-forward (at least in the days when such things existed), then look no further Shearer. This was the third successive season he had finished as the season’s top goal-scorer, an absolute peak stretch for one of the country’s greatest. He did it in a time when England had an unusually rich crop of homegrown strikers.
Andy Cole (Newcastle, 93/94, 34 goals)
At his peak, was there a sharper sniffer of chances in England than Cole? He did later give the impression that he needed more than a couple of chances to score but during this season, in particular, he had a sixth sense for where the ball would end up inside the penalty area. His 41 goals in all competitions this season broke a 70-year-old club record.
Teddy Sheringham (Nottingham Forest/Tottenham, 92/93, 22 goals)
Has there been a smarter striker in modern England than Sheringham, or a player more ahead of his time? It is tempting to wonder how well Sheringham would have gone today, or on the continent, where out-and-out strikers are a little meh. He was never quick, but made up for it with his smarts and great vision. This season, the Premier League’s first, he scored the first goal that Sky Sports showed live.
