Player	Top	Middle	Bottom	Total	%Top	%Middle	%Bottom
Beardsley	8	16	23	47	17%	34%	49%
Cole	10	22	11	43	23%	51%	26%
Ferdinand	10	18	13	41	24%	44%	32%
Fox	3	4	5	12	25%	33%	42%
Gillespie	4	1	5	10	40%	10%	50%
Kitson	2	5	3	10	20%	50%	30%
Lee	5	16	12	33	15%	48%	36%
Shearer	21	21	27	69	30%	30%	39%
Solano	5	5	5	15	33%	33%	33%
Speed	3	8	8	19	16%	42%	42%
Watson	2	5	4	11	18%	45%	36%

Stick that one up your a*ses London meedja. Shearer maintains a high scoring ratio against every level of opposition. Interestingly Beardo suffers according to the figures but that ignores the importance of some of his goals against bottom clubs: QPR in 1995-96 anyone?

Nothing much to learn from this. It just reinforces the opinion that Sir Les couldn't win us the crucial 6-pointers at the top which led to signing Shearer, but how much of that was down to better teams being able to cut the supply off from the wings that Les depended on?

I'll post the full list of scorers some time as it has some interesting points like Ginola only bothering against top sides and Tino showing his class against crap sides and top sides but not able to unduly influence the mid-table hurly-burly.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Answers

Nobby comes our surprisingly well. I have to say that these stats would tend to agree with my statement on Cole v Shearer, but no doubt we'll get more tomorrow which don't.

By that time however I will be condemning all statistics as bollox again.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

It's actually really hard to make a comparison Nick because Cole was playing against 22 teams so there were a lot more mid-table sides. Perhaps it would be better to consider 1993-95 as having a bottom 8 rather than a bottom 6 which would adjust things even more in line with your feelings about Cole v Shearer.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

can we look at this on a goals per game basis by season to take into account the relative strength of the nufc team.

e.g. compare a player with a strong goals per game average in a mid table team versus when we were good. a goals per game total for the entire team by season would be a good comparison with the individual stats

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001