it's A Sair Fecht Wearing Number Nine Today

WHEN I WAS a boy, back in the 1950s and 1960s, football teams were laid-out in the time-honoured 2-3-5 formation: goalkeeper, right and left full-backs, right, centre and left half-backs, outside-right, inside-right, centre-forward, inside-left, outside-left. Today, in the final year of the first quarter of the 21^st century, those few newspapers who still print teams, still generally use this formation.

The reality is, even in the 1950s, British teams generally played in a loose 3-4-3 formation: goalkeeper, the two full-backs and the centre-half concentrated on defending, the two wing-halves and the two inside-forwards occupied the midfield, while the attacking threat generally came from the two wingers and the centre forward.

The great Hungarian team of the early 1950s mixed things up; centre-forward Nándor Hidegkuti may have worn the number nine shirt, but he was withdrawn to a more midfield role, alongside József Bozsik – providing chances for inside-forwards Ferenc Puskás and Sándor Kocsis to score (although this didn't prevent him from scoring a hat-trick against England in 1953).

Then, in 1958, in winning the World Cup, Brazil further modified formations, by introducing 4-4-2, which involved withdrawing one wing-half to form a double centre-half team, while the other wing-half and one of the inside-forwards took on the midfield creating roles.

The next evolution came with the introduction of the 4-3-3 formation: goalkeeper, two full-backs and two central defenders at the back, three midfielders and three forwards. Evolution continued until today we have seemingly infinite variations around a fairly common template – the flat back-four, five men in midfield and one lone striker.

Some clubs now go with three at the back, two holding midfielders, three attacking midfielders, a “False number nine” and the single front man, These changes perhaps demonstrate, in my life time we have gone from an emphasis on trying to score goals to win (five front-line players) to an emphasis on not losing (packing the back field).

It used to be said, every young boy wanted to be the centre-forward, the guy with the glamour job of scoring the goals. Today's wearers of the number nine shirt, while still expected to put the ball in the net with a degree of regularity, increasingly are being asked to run themselves into the ground against two or three defenders, with little help from his team-mates.

The record books tell us – since the first International, in 1872, 432 players have scored for Scotland in full internationals. In terms of goals scored, the top ten are:

1. Denis Law – 55 games – 30 goals – 0.55 goals per game and Kenny Dalglish – 102 games – 30 goals – 0.29 gpg

3. Hughie Gallacher – 20 games – 23 goals – 1.15 gpg

4. Lawrie Reilly – 38 games – 22 goals – 0.58 gpg

5. Ally McCoist – 61 games – 19 goals – 0.31 gpg

6. Kenny Miller – 68 games – 18 goals – 0.28 gpg

7. John McGinn – 71 games – 18 goals – 0.25 gpg

8. Robert Hamilton – 11 games – 15 goals – 1.38 gpg

9. RS McColl – 13 games – 13 goals – 1.00 gpg

10. Andy Wilson – 12 games – 13 goals – 1.08 gpg

Eight of those top ten goal scorers were out and out strikers, but, it is striking that only five of the ten met the long-established benchmark for an international-class striker – scoring at a rate of above 0.5 goals per game, or, a goal every-other game.

Using this benchmark, since the end of WWII, 19 players have beaten that mark in full internationals for Scotland. Aside from Law and Reilly, these players and their gpg averages are: Harry Morris – 3.00 gpg; Charlie Fleming – 2.00 gpg; Joe Harper – 1.40 gpg; Bobby Flavell, Alex Linwood, Hugh Howie, Alfie Conn Senr, Sir Alex Ferguson – all1.00 gpg; George Hamilton – 0.80 gpg; Alex Young – 0.63 gpg; Bobby Johnstone 0.59 gpg; Jimmy Mason 0.57 gpg; Jackie Mudie 0.53 gpg; Colin Stein 0.52 gpg; Alan Gilzean, Mark McGhee and Ted MacDougall – all 0.50 gpg.

Thirteen of these nineteen players were centre-forwards, which emphasises how putting the ball in the net is still seen as the primary task of the man in the number nine shirt, but, we should perhaps accept, the switch to a back four and twin centre halves has made his job that bit harder.

Five of the 19 are also members of Scotland's far from exclusive One-Cap Wonders Club,which says much about how inconsistent and arbitgrary were the decisions of the old SFA Selection Committee.

The last Scotland striker to hit the 0.50 gpg target was Mark McGhee, who won the last of his four Scotland caps 40 years ago. Whilst, of those with more than a single cap, statistically, Scotland's best post-war goalscorer has been Joe Harper, whose average of 1.40 gpg probably merited him winning more than his five caps.

Thus we should perhaps be rewriting the rules for gauging a striker's worth. Might it be time to recalibrate the benchmark downwards, to perhaps 0.25 or 0.3 gpg, to better reflect the realities of the modern game.

In which case, are we maybe being a bit hard on Rangers' Cyrille Dessers, who has copped some flak for not scoring more than one goal in Thursday night's draw with Olimpiacos, in Athens; or Lawrence Shankland, who failed to find the net in Hearts' home loss to German side Heidenheim the same night.

This pair went head-to-head in the SPL on Sunday, with Dessers coming out on top by scoring the only goal of the game, leaving Shankland ever-deeper in the sort of Couldnae hit a coo on the erse wi' a banjo goals drought which occasionally strikes all but the absolutely elite strikers.

It's a sair fecht wearing the number nine jersey in Scotland today; but, somehow, as a former goalkeeper, I'm rather relishing their discomfort.