Harry Kane vs. Alan Shearer: comparative career paths

In terms of strikers, careers and goal-scoring, Alan Shearer’s PL record is far superior to any other player, it has to be H’s (club level) target . I wanted to take a look at how they compare at the same age, and as their careers progressed.

(A quick mention though for Serge Aguero who is scoring at an almost identical rate to H but, at five years his senior, will run out of time (he came to the PL at aged 23 and is now 30)).

The Premier League’s top scorers : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Premier_League_players_with_100_or_more_goals

For the purpose of comparison, it’s helpful that H was born in July and Shearer in August. From that we can conveniently ascribe a full season to a respective age. For example for the 2018/19 season, H will be 25 years old (Shearer will be 48!).

Points of interest: we can see that H has made fewer appearances but has scored more goals; that translates into a career goal/game ratio of 0.59 for Shearer and a current ratio of 0.7 for H: more goal s in fewer games for H.

We can also see that Shearer had an 18-year career at the top level (18-years old to 36). In contrast, H had a handful of starts aged 20 and flew out the traps aged 21 – that might be partly a reflection of the more urgent nature of the PL as compared with the old First Division.

Just to say, I’ve doe this strictly out of curiosity as an amateur!

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Things to note from this chart:

I’ve extrapolated this seasons total for H; currently he is on 20 / 13 (Appearances / Goals) and for the purpose of this graph I’ve assumed season totals of 34 / 26.

The Premier League started in 92/93, after Shearer began playing at the topmost level. I have included his record from before the PL (5 seasons in the then First Division).

We can see that Shearer was pretty well injury-free until aged 27 – in that season both appearances and goals were rare.