Another Oz topping the charts?…I “Wouldn’t Change a Thing”

After recently scouring through the famous books of our illustrious history/the archives section of a Toffee website, I stumbled upon a section listing Everton’s goal-scoring charts.

The archive listed Everton’s top 3 goalscorers in every season since the founding of the football league, something that makes for interesting reading on it’s own merits.  It delighted me to see the names of Dean, Lawton, Vernon, Pickering, Royle, Latchford, Sharp and Lineker topping the charts for their respective seasons, and in more recent years Cottee, Kanchelskis and Ferguson.

The club’s top scorer for each season is remembered and honoured over those that come runners up, and rightly so.  Yet looking at our most recent history I noticed the same name cropping up, not for his appearances at No 1 but for his ever presence within the top 3 goalscorers since his arrival at the club.

This man has been a member of this top 3 club every season since he came to L4 in 2004, netting no less that 7 goals in any given season.  Consider that this has been achieved by a midfielder, and you get a better understanding of this man’s importance to the club.  “Can yer’ tell who it is yet?”  If that didn’t give it away you should be ashamed.

Tim Cahill, of course, is the man dominating these charts season after season.  The fact that he is such an ever-present is testimony to the greatest thing to come out of Oz since Kylie Minogue.  It also highlights his importance to Everton, a sentiment I would like to voice loud and clear amid recently hearing various Blues calling for the Aussie to be benched.

Tiny Tim netted a remarkable 12 goals in his debut season at Goodison Park.  Bear in mind that the 04/05 season was his first season in the Premier League, then ‘remarkable’ really does fit the bill.

His second season yielded 8 goals- not a bad return, and his third campaign saw the ex Milwall man contribute 7.  Think back to the 06/07 season and you will remember that Cahill suffered two serious injuries: one in November at home to Aston Villa no thanks to his then team mate Lee Carsley- thanks Lee; the other towards the end of the season (March I think) against Sheff Utd.  Who was the culprit on that occasion?  If I’m not mistaken it was brought about by our very own Phil Jagielka…thanks Phil.

But we forgive and forget, and 7 goals in those circumstances is by no means a bad haul for a midfielder.  The next year he broke the 10 goal mark, the year after he recorded 9 and last year he came runner up to Louis Saha with another 10.

Cahill is a natural goalscorer.  I don’t think any of us are naive enough to say that he is a great footballer; technically, he comes way down the pecking order in those charts headed by Arteta and Pienaar.

But he has proven, year in year out that he can and will score in and around 10 goals a season.  Take Cahill out of the team and you take away this amount of goals and God knows how many points to go with them.

Tiny is a vital part of this team, and if we have any hopes of finishing at the business end of the table this year, then we’ll need Cahill to be once again at the top of our scoring table.

“I Should Be So Lucky”?…with this Aussie, luck has nothing to do with it.

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