Hitting the target

The club records of a couple of soccer’s fabled old goal-scorers were levelled this month. Two nice round numbers, too, as the silky and sometimes sulky Frenchman, Thierry Henry, matched the 150 league goals banged in for Arsenal in the 1930s by the then boy wonder from Devon, Cliff Bastin; and aging thoroughbred Alan Shearer briefly perked up Newcastle United’s generally crestfallen supporters by reaching the 200 of Jackie Milburn, his predecessor as Tyneside’s dearly beloved totem in the No. 9 shirt. Of course, each of them has potted around half as many again outside league competition and for other teams, but neither has a realistic chance of threatening history’s all-time net-billowers. Arthur Rowley, bullocking stalwart of Leicester City and Shrewsbury Town, still tops the bill, retiring 40 seasons ago with 464 league and cup goals in 619 matches. In all first-class games, Liverpool’s (and Real Sociedad’s) John Aldridge untied his shooting boots in 1998 with 455 goals in the pot, and Jimmy Greaves, of Tottenham Hotspur (and AC Milan) called it a day in the early 1970s with 429.