WordCloud: 1,000 Newcastle Premier League Goals
Fast forward nineteen years later and on Monday the 17th of September 2012, Newcastle United reached a monumental landmark and scored their 1000th Premier League goal, as Demba Ba came off the bench to score against Everton.
Scoring 1000 goals is a fantastic achievement and sees us join the existing elite group comprising of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. It’s a bigger achievement when you consider that we’ve achieved the feat in 18 seasons – the same number of seasons as Spurs – and we’ve done it quicker than Everton and Aston Villa who have yet to surpass the 1000 goal threshold, even though they’ve played in all 20 seasons of the Premier League.
I thought it’d be interesting to see the different number of scorers we’ve had (yes, I am that sad) and this lovely wordcloud is the result.
As you can see and no surprise at all, Alan Shearer dominates the wordcloud with his 148 goals, more than 100 Premier League goals than the next highest scorer, Peter Beardsley (47). In fact, if you add up the next three highest scorers Peter Beardsley, Andrew Cole (43) and Les Ferdinand (41), it would only amass to 131 Premier League goals – 17 shy of Alan Shearer’s total. Another Shearer fact – he is the only player to have scored 100 goals for two different teams.
It’s quite a sad fact that other than Shearer, between 1997 and our relegation season in 2009, we’ve not had another prolific striker at St James’ Park. Between those years only Obefemi Martins (06/07) and Michael Owen (07/08) managed to score more than 10 goals a season. Since coming back to the Premier League in 2010, we’ve had Kevin Nolan, Andy Carroll, Demba Ba and Papiss Cissé breaking the same barrier in just two seaasons. 2 players in 12 seasons compared to 4 players in 2 seasons – things are definitely better.
Our 5th highest Premier League scorer is one Foluwashola Ameobi. Since making his debut in the 2000/01 season, he’s only scored 40 goals in 11 seasons in the Premier League – quite a poor return, especially when you consider that 7 of those goals are against Sunderland. However, we’ve all come to adore The Fenham Eusebio and when he scores this season (he’s bound to score against the Mackems again, surely?), he will have scored in 10 different seasons of the Premier League – the same as Alan Shearer, albeit over 100 goals less…
I’m a bit obsessed with this wordcloud business, so here’s another without Shearer hogging the limelight. You can make out those with fewer goals from yesteryear, like Ruel Fox, Temuri Ketsbaia and Paul Kitson.
In the middle of wordcloud, you’ll notice OGs. 30 own goals have been scored in that time, with Michael Duberry the only player to have scored two own goals in our favour. Only one player has scored for Newcastle and scored an own goal whilst playing against us? Who? Scroll to the bottom to find out.
If you’re a stats geek like I am, you might interested in the raw data behind all of this.
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Newcastle1000goals/Sheet1?:embed=y
You can sort the data in anyway you wish for the 18 and a bit seasons we’ve played in the Premier League. We scored the most amount of goals (82) in our first season in 1993/94, where Beardsley and Cole amassed an impressive 55 goals between them. 18 years on and no other striking partnership has surpassed this total. Yet 4 years later, our lowest total came – only 35 goals was scored that season. Shearer was injured in pre-season and didn’t play until February. Ginola and Ferdinand was sold by ‘King’ Kenny and John Barnes and Ian Rush were brought in as replacements. Other than Tino scoring a hat-trick against Barcelona, it was definitely a season to forget.
Before I start waffling on about more stats, the answer to that question was Geremi.
He scored an own goal playing for Chelsea on the 15th of May 2005 and scored a free kick for us when we beat Spurs 4-1 at White Hart Lane.
I’ll leave you with a list of all 131 players who have made a contribution to 1000 Premier League goals foe Newcastle United.
Author: NUFCVisualised, a Newcastle United info-graphic creator and regular statistical blogger for some top websites, you can follow him on Twitter here.
The Spectator's View 
you have said the only player to score an OG and a goal was Geremi yet in the list you Pistone doing both?
Very good point. Must have missed that out! Thanks for the feedback