53 – He Scores Goals, M’Lord – Post 19

Yesterday afternoon, Jordan Rhodes scored his 52^nd and 53^rd goals as a professional footballer. Good work for one so young, and important. He’s done it at a decent clip, too, within 128 appearances, all told, spread across four seasons and five teams (Oxford, Ipswich, Rochdale, Brentford and Huddersfield). Full credit to the lad, and he’s earned that Scotland U21 call-up.

This season he’s scored 20 goals for Huddersfield Town. Last season, he scored 23, so he stands a good chance of getting more than last year, despite missing – exactly – a month with injury. Goals and games don’t tell the whole story, though. When he was first breaking into the Ipswich team, he was playing minutes at a time – 31 in his first five appearances for Ipswich, so that’s 5 appearances gone in the time of barely a third of a match.

So I’ve broken his career down into a goals per minute ratio – it seems a more fair way of balancing it, particularly in someone who has played off the bench for a number of their starts, and even now at Town is generally substituted before 75 minutes; indeed, the longest run of 90 minute games he has had is 6, achieved twice last season, the first spell of which brought 2 goals, and the second only 1. Over the course of his career, Jordan averages a goal every 164.25 minutes he plays. That’s pretty impressive – the golden figure we have for strikers is a goal every other game, and that works out as slightly better than that. So, overall, one can only be impressed.

If we disregard his first season, 2007/08, on the basis that although Jordan scored once, he barely featured – his 12 appearances (Oxford 4, Ipswich eight) were spread over 383 minutes, which works out as a goal every, wait for it…. 383 minutes that first season. Not ideal, but understandable. After that, though, we’ve got three seasons’ worth of pretty usable data. 2008/09, when he played a short while for Rochdale before joining Brentford, both on loan, and 2009/10 and 2010/11, when he was, of course, at Huddersfield.

In pure goals terms, last season was the best – 23, with this year’s 20 and the year before’s 9 trailing a way behind. But digging a little deeper we see a bit more. Last season’s 23 goals came at a ratio of one every 188.13 minutes – just over that one every two game rate I mentioned above. This season’s 20, though, have come at a far quicker one every 120.60 minutes; roughly speaking, that’s just over 2 goals every 3 games; 2008/9’s 10 goals came every 158.30 minutes. This year, then, is the most productive season of Jordan’s life by ¼ – that’s a big margin – its brought his career minutes per goal average down from 190.70 to 164.25 – a gain of 26 minutes. Its looking good. But why?

Well, look back to that third paragraph; the clue is there – he’s not playing 90 minutes any more. From a purely statistical point of view, playing 75 minutes per game means there’s a number 15 smaller that we’re dividing by the number of goals, but that does have a knock-on. He’s fresher. Goals are coming more regularly than last season – in the 41 games he’s played in so far, Jordan’s scored in 16 of them (39%) – and that includes 2 appearances of 9 and 4 minutes – last seasons 55 games produced a score in only 18 (33%) – there is seven games left, and you wouldn’t put it past him to equal last year’s tally from a maximum of 7 games fewer than last year. Its also worth bearing in mind that Jordan isn’t a regular scorer of penalties; Gary Roberts has scored Town’s only 2 penalty strikes this season, and neither of those since very early season.

Last season, he averaged a shade over 80 minute per appearance (80.12 mins); this year, funnily enough, given the jokes about a standard 60 minute substitution, he averages just under that – 59 minutes (58.83 mins); there is a better balance, then, between games and goals – he’s not been forced to slog his guts out for 90 minutes, and we’re seeing the reward in goals, particularly those as good as yesterday’s second. He, as we found with Anthony Pilkington, is improving with every season. Long may it continue.

Some Jordan Rhodes facts you may not know.

• He scored the fastest ever headed hat-trick in League football, for Huddersfield Town, against Exeter City.
• His first goal in professional football came for Ipswich, after he came on as a half-time substitute for Gary Roberts.
• His dad coaches at Sheffield Wednesday.

Season	Games	Goals	Minutes	Minutes Per Goal (Season)	Minutes Per Goal (Career)
2007/08	12	1	383	383.00	383.00
2008/09	21	10	1583	158.30	196.60
2009/10	54	23	4327	188.13	190.70
2010/11	41	20	2412	120.60	164.25

Figures correct up to 27.03.2011