A half century of goalscorers with Odobert
This story came to being in the fifteenth minute of last Saturday’s home defeat against Chelsea but it all started on the evening of Wednesday, 18th August 2009 when Robbie Blake lifted the Turf with a stunning goal for the Clarets against Manchester United.
“Top class, Premier League class,” Martin Tyler said during commentary. It was Burnley’s first ever Premier League goal, a total that has now reached 307, and Blake, in scoring that goal, was our first Premier League goalscorer, netting our first top flight goal since Derrick Parker had scored against Coventry in our final old First Division game in 1976.
That now takes us back to Odobert last Saturday. It was widely reported that he’d become the youngest player to score a Premier League goal for Burnley. Back on that August evening in 2009, Blake, being the only player to have scored for us in the Premier League, became the oldest and the youngest. He lost the youngest tag to Wade Elliott in the next game and the oldest to Graham Alexander by mid-September when those two players scored in home wins against Everton and Sunderland respectively.
Grezza remains the oldest, and, if my maths is correct then Odobert has replaced Dwight McNeil as the youngest by ninety days. Dwight was 38 days past his 19th birthday when he netted against West Ham at the end of 2018; Odobert will celebrate his 19th birthday on 28th November, 52 days after his goal.
Now to the reason for the article. Not only did Odobert become the youngest player to score a Premier League for us, but, excluding any own goals, he also became the fiftieth player to add his name to our list of goalscorers in this league.
I doubt many Burnley fans would have ever expected us to get to that total when we left Wembley in 2009 and having suffered an immediate relegation when the list reached thirteen players, then I would think even less would have considered it.
But three promotions have followed and the list has grown. It grew to twenty by 2015 when we went straight back down again and that total had reached forty-six when we suffered our last relegation in 2022 with four of this season’s five goalscorers adding their names to the list.
In terms of new names being added, the 2019/20 season had the lowest with only Jay Rodriguez added. The number of goalscorers in that first Premier League season was thirteen and that total has been beaten twice, just, when in both 2016/17 and in 2021/22 season we had fourteen different scorers while the most new names added in any season since that first season was ten in 2016/17.
Chris Wood holds the record for 49 Premier League goals scored and is one of only five players to have reached double figures. Ashley Barnes scored 42 but the rest are some way behind; Sam Vokes scored seventeen while both Danny Ings and Jay Rodriguez are on ten. Fourteen on that list, which includes four of the current squad, have scored just once.
Barnes holds the record for having scored in the most number of seasons. His first came in 2014/15 and he scored in every other subsequent season until the 2022 relegation. That’s a total of seven. No other player has passed five but there are five with that total, striker Wood, former captain Ben Mee and Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson, the one player who could take it to six during this season.
The fifty players have scored 298 Premier League goals for Burnley between them; the total increases to 307 with own goals and that’s from a total of 312 games.
I’m sure number 51 won’t be far away, maybe at Brentford a week on Saturday, but will we ever reach three figures? Let’s hope so.
Below are The FIFTY with the dates and opponents when they scored their first Premier League goals for the Clarets.
2009/10
Robbie Blake v Manchester United (h), 19th August 2009
Wade Elliott v Everton (h), 23rd August 2009
Graham Alexander v Sunderland (h), 19th September 2009
David Nugent v Sunderland (h), 19th September 2009
Steven Fletcher v Birmingham (h), 3rd October 2009
Andre Bikey v Birmingham (h), 3rd October 2009
Chris Eagles v Backburn (a), 18th October 2009
Kevin McDonald v Manchester City (a), 7th November 2009
Steven Caldwell v Aston Villa (h), 21st November 2009
Danny Fox v West Ham (h), 6th February 2010
Martin Paterson v Aston Villa (a), 21st February 2010
Steven Thompson v Wolves (h), 13th March 2010
Jack Cork v Tottenham (h), 9th May 2010
2014/15
Scott Arfield v Chelsea (h), 18th August 2014
Michael Kightly v Leicester (a), 4th October 2014
Ross Wallace v Leicester (a), 4th October 2014
George Boyd v West Ham (h), 18th October 2014
Danny Ings v Everton (h), 26th October 2014
Ashley Barnes v Hull (h), 9th November 2014
Ben Mee v Crystal Palace (h), 17th January 2015
2016/17
Sam Vokes v Liverpool (h), 20th August 2016
Andre Gray v Liverpool (h), 20th August 2016
Steven Defour v Hull (h), 10th September 2016
Jeff Hendrick v Watford (h), 26th September 2016
Michael Keane v Watford (h), 26th September 2016
Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson v Crystal Palace (h), 5th November 2016
Dean Marney v Manchester City (h), 26th November 2016
Stephen Ward v Bournemouth (h), 10th December 2016
Joey Barton v Southampton (h), 14th January 2017
Robbie Brady v Chelsea (h), 12th February 2017
2017/18
Chris Wood v Tottenham (a), 27th August 2017
Kevin Long v Leicester (h), 14th April 2018
2018/19
James Tarkowski v Watford (h), 19th August 2018
Matěj Vydra v Bournemouth (h), 22nd September 2018
Aaron Lennon v Bournemouth (h), 22nd September 2018
Ben Gibson v Everton (h), 26th December 2018
Dwight McNeil v West Ham (h), 30th December 2018
Ashley Westwood v Liverpool (a), 10th March 2019
2019/20
Jay Rodriguez v Aston Villa (a), 28th September 2019
2020/21
Jimmy Dunne v Leicester (a), 20th September 2020
Matt Lowton v Crystal Palace (a), 13th February 2021
2021/22
Maxwel Cornet v Leicester (a), 25th September 2021
Wout Weghorst v Brighton (a), 19th February 2022
Josh Brownhill v Brighton (a), 19th February 2022
Nathan Collins v Everton (h), 6th April 2022
Connor Roberts v Southampton (h), 21st April 2022
2023/24
Lyle Foster v Aston Villa (h), 27th August 2023
Zeki Amdouni v Nottingham Forest (a), 18th September 2023
Jacob Bruun Larsen v Luton (a), 3rd October 2023
Wilson Odobert v Chelsea (h), 7th October 2023
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