Jim's column 29.4.23

Last week I mentioned that Viktor Gyokeres had now scored 40 league goals for Coventry City since joining them in January 2021. A week after Vik reached that total Matty Godden joined him on the 40-goal mark with the first goal against Reading. I thought it would be interesting to compare the two striker's records.

Godden joined City from Peterborough in August 2019 and in each of his four seasons he has been troubled with injuries. Viktor joined the Sky Blues from Brighton in January 2021, initially on loan, and since his permanent transfer later that year he has appeared in all but one league game since then.

Before today's game the league record of the two is as follows:

Godden

Season	Games	Minutes	Goals	Penalties
2019-20	22 + 4 subs	1862	14	3
2020-21	18 + 5 subs	1452	6	2
2021-22	17 + 7 subs	1572	12	3
2022-23	20 + 8 subs	1827	8	2
Totals	77 + 24 subs	6713	40	10

Gyokeres

Season	Games	Minutes	Goals	Penalties
2020-21	7 + 12 subs	758	3	-
2021-22	41 + 4 subs	3592	17	-
2022-23	42 + 2 subs	3852	20	2
Totals	90 + 18 subs	8202	40	2

The statistic which surprised me from these figures is that Godden has scored his forty goals in less game time that Gyokeres. Matty has scored a goal every 167 minutes while Vik has taken 205 minutes per goal. Of course Godden has scored 10 of his goals from the penalty spot whilst Vik has only two spot-kicks on his record. If you strip out the penalties then Vik's hit rate (one goal per 215 minutes) becomes slightly better than Matty's (one per 223 minutes).

Another factor to bear in mind in the comparison is that fourteen of Godden's goals came in League One whereas Gyokeres' goals were all in the Championship.

Fans will have their own views about the player's abilities and of course they are very different in style. One comparison I haven't been able to make is the respective striker's goals per chances. My feeling is that Godden's hit rate would be better but the stats may not back me up.

I had an interesting email from the historian of German club Alemannia Aachen, Armin Krueger. He wanted to know the details of a friendly game between Coventry City and Aachen in 1962.

I was able to give him the details of the game and a scan of the match programme. The game was played on Monday 19^thFebruary 1962, just two months after Jimmy Hill had taken over as manager of the club. Hill arranged several friendly games in the early part of the year to assess his squad and had played Czech club Slovan Bratislava three weeks earlier and the British Army the previous week.

This was before the Bundesliga was formed but Aachen were in the Oberliga West, a high level in West Germany at the time and had famous Yugoslav international player Branco Zebec in their line-up. City won an exciting game 5-3 in front of 7,100 fans. Ken Satchwell scored a hat-trick with Roy Dwight (penalty) and an own goal completing the scoring. Sadly Aachen are now playing in the fourth tier of German football.