Glenn Murray revealed as the Premier League’s third most clinical striker

Just when you think there couldn’t be any more statistics revealed to underline how important Glenn Murray is to Brighton and Hove Albion, along comes another one.

A few weeks ago, we found out that no Premier League team has ever relied on the goals of one man like Brighton do Murray. He’s notched 36% of the Albion’s goals in the top flight, the highest amount one player has ever contributed to a single team since Sky Sports invented football in 1992.

Now it’s been revealed that Murray is the third most clinical striker in the Premier League. Across the course of the 2018-19 season, he converted more of his chances than Mo Salah, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sergio Aguero. Only Anthony Martial and Sadio Mane were more deadly than Murray.

To qualify for the list, you have to have at least five goals to your name. United’s Martial leads the way with 10 goals from 39 shots, a conversion rate of 25.6%.

Liverpool‘s Mane is next. He scored 22 times from 87 shots on his way to finishing tied for the Golden Boot with Salah and Aubameyang. That’s a conversion rate of 25.3%

Then comes Murray. The Albion’s talismanic forward scored 13 times in the league last season from only 54 shots, meaning he took 24.1% of the chances that he had.

It’s a ridiculous figure and it makes you wonder how many more goals Murray could have if the Albion hadn’t of been so conservative under Chris Hughton.

That is one of the points that Murray apparently tried to make to Hughton when he and several other senior players approached the Albion boss about adopting a more positive approach ahead of the home game with Plucky Little Bournemouth.

Hughton’s response was to drop Murray for that game, which we of course ended up losing 5-0 with it looking suspiciously like the players downed tools.

Murray is said to have told people in and around the club that with the handbrake off, he could have scored another six goals last season. His conversion rate backs up that theory. If he’d converted 24.1% of the 137 shots that Salah has taken, he’d have scored 33 times.

Put Murray in Sergio Aguero’s boots and present him with 118 chances and he’s notching 28. Jamie Vardy is the closest Englishman to Murray’s conversion rate with the Leicester City striker finishing 22.8% of his opportunities. In an injury plagued season, England captain Harry Kane’s conversion rate was 16.6%.

For all the calls from various sections of the Albion fan base that Murray is too old, slows us down and needs to be replaced, these statistics back up the fact that if you play to his strengths and give him opportunities, then he’ll score goals.

You write him off at your peril. When he returned on loan from Bournemouth, some supporters openly questioned why we were signing a 33-year-old striker if we wanted to be promoted to the Premier League? 23 goals soon answered that one.

The same thing happened again ahead of our first season in the top flight. We were doomed playing a 34-year-old striker up front in the toughest league in the world. 14 goals later and those Armageddon-esque prophecies looked very silly.

Florin Andone and Jurgen Locadia were meant to spell the end of Murray last season. His response? Score even more goals than he’d managed the previous year, in a team which finished lower down the table and with four less points. If he repeats the trick again next season, he’ll overhaul Tommy Cook as Brighton’s record goalscorer.

No doubt, there will be a clamour to move on 35-year-old Murray again this summer, especially with a new manager at the helm who will apparently want to play attacking football and who has a strong working relationship with a pretty decent young target man in Oliver McBurnie at his former club.

But as the statistics and the record books show, you’ll find only three more deadly strikers in the Premier League than Murray. When Graham Potter gets to work with his new players, he’ll realise that the veteran isn’t done yet. Murray keeps fit and he looks after himself. Sure, he has no pace, but then when we first signed him from Rochdale in 2008 he often looked like he was running through treacle – and he was 24 back then.

If Potter wants a man who is going to put away all these opportunities that his attacking football is going to create for us, then you won’t find many better than Murray.