Harry Kane’s hat-trick in Tottenham’s 5-2 win against Southampton on Boxing Day 2017 meant that his 39 goals in a calendar year surpassed Alan Shearer’s 22-year Premier League record of 36 for Blackburn Rovers in 1995. The only problem is that some nine decades earlier another goalscoring great had enjoyed a year even more prolific than both of these men which is unlikely to ever be equalled.
Everton’s Dixie Dean netted a whopping 47 top flight goals over the 12 months of 1928 and an incredible 85 in all competitions that year to ensure his place as England’s greatest ever goalscorer and what’s more this extraordinary effort came on the back of an equally incredible 1927 which had seen him find the net 48 times in the league alone.
Born in Birkenhead, William “Dixie” Dean began his football career with Tranmere Rovers before moving over the water to Everton, the club he had supported as a child and where he would confirm his status as the greatest goal machine in English Football.
Dean was the archetypal old-fashioned centre forward as well as being the first ever player to wear the iconic number-9 jersey for the Blues and his efforts during the 1927/28 season, in which he scored a record 60 league goals, are unlikely ever to be bettered in the modern game.
Although remembered more for finding the net than winning trophies Dean’s scoring exploits often went hand-in-hand with club success at Everton as the big man’s goals led to plenty of silverware during his time at Goodison Park.
His record-breaking 60 goals in the 1927/28 season meant the Blues were crowned champions, and again won the First Division in 1932 before lifting the FA Cup in 1933 after defeating Manchester City at Wembley as Dean inevitably found the net once again in a comfortable 3-1 win.
A real handful for defenders Dean’s rather impressive frame had been forged working in a Merseyside dairy as a boy and lifting milk churns for hours on end, something which came in handy years later on the football field. “When Dixie went up for the ball, he was almost unstoppable,” claimed future Manchester United manager Matt Busby who played against Dean during his time as a player across Stanley Park with Liverpool.
But despite his hard-man image Dean was never booked even though he was often on the receiving end of some pretty harsh treatment from opposition defenders and in one particular game for Tranmere against Rochdale was kicked so hard in the groin that he had to have a testicle removed.
Off the field, it was a rather different story as Dean regularly found himself at odds with the suits at the FA who, like today, very much ran the game back then. He once claimed to have been dropped for an England game against France in Paris for refusing to eat the soup served during the pre-match meal, and it’s been suggested that his willingness to question the establishment was the reason he received so few England caps.
Even so, his record at international level was almost as impressive as that in league football; finding the net 18 times in just 16 games as an England player before turning-out for his country for the last time aged just 22.
But perhaps nothing shows Dean’s ability and desire to score goals than the closing stages of that glorious 1927/28 campaign. Having found the net in each of Everton’s first nine matches he’d reached 40 goals by Christmas and looked odds on to become the first man to score 60 goals in a season, only for injury to strike with weeks of the season remaining.
Going in to the final match Dean needed three goals to clinch the record as the Blues faced Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal at Goodison Park. With five minutes remaining, and with Dean already on a hat-trick, Alex Troup delivered the perfect cross and there was the big number 9 to power the ball home for the record.
Thanks to quite astonishing figures Bill “Dixie” Dean will forever be remembered as probably the game’s greatest goalscorer even when much of what happened before 1992 is rarely acknowledged; producing numbers that many modern-day forwards can only dream of.
Of course, it’s ridiculous to try and compare records or debate who was the greatest as the game has changed so much over the last 90 years or so, not to mention the fact that the nature of recording official statistics back then was probably slightly less reliable than it is today.
What we do know is that, but for the outbreak of World War II and a number of key injuries brought about due to his extremely physical approach to playing the game, Dean would probably have scored even more goals than he did, an incredible thought considering his record.
“Dixie was the greatest centre forward there will ever be,” former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said of Dean’s ability to find the net. “His record of goalscoring is the most amazing thing under the sun. He belongs in the company of the supremely great, like Beethoven, Shakespeare and Rembrandt.”
