Which players have been the lowest scoring highest scorers?

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/07/the-knowledge-successful-seasons-united

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“I was looking through Ajax’s history recently and noticed that during the 2010‑11 season their top goalscorer, Mounir El Hamdaoui, netted a mere 13 goals on the way to securing the Eredivisie title and it got me thinking: what’s the lowest number of goals scored by the top goalscorer in a league-winning side [let’s arbitrarily restrict this to leagues where the teams have to play at least 34 domestic matches per season]?” pondered Steve Boden.

As strange as it may seem, El Hamdaoui’s feat (let’s call it a feat) was surpassed (somewhat) just last year. In the Romanian Liga I (a 36-game campaign), Steaua Bucharest comfortably secured a second successive league title in 2013-14, finishing five points ahead of nearest rivals Astra Giurgiu and scoring 71 times. Curiously, the club’s top scorer, Federico Piovaccari, contributed just 10 throughout the entire campaign.

Before El Hamdaoui, though, there was Ruben Baraja. “When Milan won Serie A in 93-94, they only scored 36 goals in total,” writes Paddy O’Brien. “Daniele Massaro was top scorer with 11 goals, however the next top scorer only managed three. Beating that, however, is the fact that Ruben Baraja was Valencia’s top scorer when the won La Liga in 2001-02, with a mere seven goals.”

And slightly further down the food chain: “In Plymouth Argyle’s 2001-02 season, when they won what was then called Division Three with an at-the-time record-breaking 102 points, they had a pair of top-scorers both who totalled 11 goals,” writes Tom Aldous. “They were the dominant centre-back Graham Coughlin and the wonderful French fancy David Friio. As Division Three season compromised of 46 games that means that Friio and Coughlin both had a goal ratio of less than one goal every four games.”

UNITED IN VICTORY

“While shooting the proverbial, a mate of mine raised an interesting point this morning [Friday 28 November 2014],” wrote Daniel Jackson on Friday 28 November 2014. “As of today, the Premier League table reads: 4: Man United, 5: Newcastle United, 6: West Ham United. Question: Is this the highest that all three ‘Uniteds’ have sat at any given time? Has there been another occasion were all three were positioned in the top six?”

Occasionally an email arrives in the Knowledge inbox that has such a smack of nerdvana that it deserves simply reprinting in full, so we’re handing this one over to Tom Thorby:

Pete Waterhouse adds that in 2001-02, Manchester United finished third, Newcastle United fourth, Leeds United fifth and West Ham United seventh – four Uniteds in the top seven.

THIS. IS. SPARTANS.

“Since English football was split up into the pyramid tier system, what’s the highest number of non-League teams to make it to the third round of the FA Cup?” wondered Alan Flynn. “What’s the furthest a non-League team has progressed in the FA Cup before being knocked out?”

An intriguing question the answer to which may cause some surprise. Since the introduction of the pyramid system, non-League sides have taken giant strides given the mountain they have to climb. Eight reached the third round in the 2008-09 season (Barrow, Histon, Forest Green Rovers, Eastwood Town, Blyth Spartans, Kidderminster Harriers, Kettering Town, and Torquay United), a peak year for the underdog and the highest number on record.

The furthest a non-league team has ever made it in the FA Cup is the fifth round. It has, confirms Cameron Climie, happened on seven occasions: 1947-48 Colchester United FC (Southern League); 1948-49: Yeovil Town (Southern League); 1977-78: Blyth Spartans (Northern League); 1984-85: Telford United (Alliance Premier League); 1993-94: Kidderminster Harriers (Football Conference); 2010-11: Crawley Town (Conference National); and 2012-13: Luton Town (Conference National)

Blyth Spartans’s run in the 1977-78 season is probably the most remarkable; the Northern League side’s players, on wages of £7-a-week, had already won seven rounds (including a replay in the second qualifying round) before reaching the third round, where they defeated Second Division Stoke City 3-2. Their run came to an end after defeat to Wrexham in the fifth round, where they lost a replay and missed out on the opportunity of a quarter-final encounter with Arsenal.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

“Chippenham striker David Pratt was sent off just three seconds into a game against Bashley last month,” said Jimmy Finn back in those sepia-tinged days of 2009. “Does that qualify as the fastest sending off ever?”

Surprisingly it doesn’t, Jimmy. Pratt was indeed reported (by this very website, among others) to have set a new record when he was dismissed for ploughing into Bashley’s Chris Knowles after three seconds of Chippenham’s 2-1 British Gas Business Premier defeat on 27 December. We had all forgotten, however, about the Cross Farm Park Celtic striker Lee Todd, who was sent off just two seconds into a game back in October 2000.

Where Pratt was sent off for a reckless challenge, Todd got his marching orders for foul language. Todd had his back to the referee at the start of the Sunday league game against Taunton East Reach Wanderers, and was startled by the force with which the whistle was blown for kick-off. “Fuck me, that was loud,” muttered Todd, and the referee promptly showed him the red card.

“I wasn’t swearing at the ref or anyone else,” protested Todd afterwards. “Anyone else would have done the same – he nearly blew my ear off.” The manager, Mark Heard, was supportive. “Players should be sent off for swearing at the ref or a player,” he added after his team won the game 11‑2. “But referees are supposed to use a bit of common sense.”

Previously, we discovered the record for the quickest dismissal at the beginning of a professional match was believed to have been held by Giuseppe Lorenzo of the Italian club Bologna, who was sent off after 10 seconds in 1990 for hitting a Parma player. And then there are the substitutes. Sheffield United’s Keith Gillespie was technically sent off after zero seconds during a Premier League game against Reading in January 2007, but that was after he had come on as a substitute. After replacing Derek Geary early in the second half, Gillespie elbowed Stephen Hunt in the face and duly saw red before the game had even been restarted. Walter Boyd achieved a similar feat while at Swansea, earning himself a dismissal before play had resumed when he was brought on as a substitute by Swansea during a game against Darlington back in 2000.

For thousands more questions and answers take a long and lazy trip through the Knowledge archive.

CAN YOU HELP?

“Hey lads,” begins the rather over-familiar Mark Raftery, “my mate reckons that Steve Staunton holds the record for appearing in the most drawn matches at World Cups, the figure being eight. He definitely played in four in 1990 versus England, Holland, Egypt and Romania, one in 1994 against the Dutch, and two in 2002 against Germany and Spain. Is this true?”

“I noticed at the weekend that Tony Dingwall netted for Ross County away at Motherwell,” writes Graeme Miller. “With Ross County being based in the small town of Dingwall, I wondered if there were other cases of a player scoring for a club based in a place that shares his surname and if so, who has been the most prolific scorer for his namesake?”

“When discussing Harry Redknapp maybe being in for Peter Crouch my son asked me if any manager had ever fielded the same team of 11 players for more than one club,” writes Andy Griffiths. “If not what is highest number of players?”

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