Matty Godden scored his 3rd goal of the season against Swansea at the weekend, and his 28th goal in just 80 Championship appearances for Cov. That struck me as a pretty solid record for somebody who’s had to put up with an inordinate amount of grief in pre-season and after failing to score against Leicester. I looked into it.
It all started with a tweet.
That looks good. But just how good?
Well, it’s superb. It’s 0.35 goals per game, which is a better ratio in the Championship than every one of these high scorers from recent years:
Olly Watkins
Carlton Morris
Said Benrahma
Brennan Johnson
Adam Armstrong
Lucas Joao
Elijah Adebayo
Chuba Akpom
Iliman Ndiaye
Joao Pedro
Bryan Mbuemo
Ben Brereton-Diaz
Jerry Yates
Jonson Clarke-Harris
Morgan Gibbs-White
Viktor Gyokeres
I don’t know about you, but having a better scoring rate than of these high quality players suggests that his performances have been pretty decent.
This statement is of course slightly selective as I initially only used his Championship record with Coventry. We often forget about those 5 appearances Godden had for Scunthorpe when he was 18. How does that impact his record?
In the interests of a fair comparison, I’ll add those into the equation. His record drops to 0.33 goals per game.
Only Vik and Watkins from the same selection jump above him. And only by 0.01, I might add.
So, however you slice it up, his output in the Championship stands up against all but the outstanding recent records of Mitrovic, Toney, Pukki, Solanke and Piroe.
| Name | Games | Goals | Goals Per Game |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mitrovic | 126 | 85 | 0.67 |
| Toney | 45 | 30 | 0.67 |
| Pukki | 125 | 65 | 0.52 |
| Solanke | 86 | 44 | 0.51 |
| Piroe | 91 | 41 | 0.45 |
| Grabban | 284 | 112 | 0.39 |
| A Ayew | 87 | 31 | 0.36 |
| McBurnie | 125 | 44 | 0.35 |
| Sargeant | 43 | 15 | 0.35 |
| Watkins | 132 | 45 | 0.34 |
| Gyokeres | 121 | 41 | 0.34 |
| Morris | 104 | 34 | 0.33 |
| Godden | 85 | 28 | 0.33 |
| Benrahma | 83 | 27 | 0.33 |
| B Johnson | 50 | 16 | 0.32 |
| Armstrong | 189 | 59 | 0.31 |
| Moore | 155 | 46 | 0.30 |
| Lucas Joao | 242 | 71 | 0.29 |
| Adebayo | 100 | 28 | 0.28 |
| Akpom | 129 | 36 | 0.28 |
| Ndiaye | 76 | 21 | 0.28 |
| Joao Pedro | 73 | 20 | 0.27 |
| Mbuemo | 86 | 23 | 0.27 |
| Brereton | 213 | 53 | 0.25 |
| Yates | 112 | 25 | 0.22 |
| Clarke-Harris | 98 | 21 | 0.21 |
| Weiman | 307 | 64 | 0.21 |
| Gibbs-White | 60 | 12 | 0.20 |
“Not a Championship striker”
I see many say they don’t rate him because of his general play, or the fact that he has been injured a lot. I think it’s acceptable to have a personal opinion about a player’s style who you just don’t fancy. We all value different things and want specific things from players. But sometimes what you like aesthetically doesn’t correlate with reality and the impact that player is having.
With a record like this, over three seasons, should you really be able to say “Godden’s not a Championship striker” and get away with it?
Robins clearly rates his contribution, and you have to say when looking at the detail of what a contribution for a striker really consists of (goals) – you can see why this clinical and experienced goalscorer continues to be selected in 2023.
The injury argument is less acceptable to me. Of course, he’s been injured, but can we truly criticise or write off a good player because they’ve gone through a bad period of injuries? And when one of those was appendicitis, sometimes you might just have to say fair fucks, that’s pretty unlucky.
I still think we need another striker, another option to round off the striking capability we have. But for me, Godden remains one of that group. In terms of output at this level, he’s delivered far too many goals to be written off in the way some fans decided was appropriate after the Leicester game.
They deserved the finger-in-ears response.
