Aguero vs Henry: The Greatest PL #9?

Scroto Baggins

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Aguero has been playing for the best team in the league for almost his whole PL career. Of course he scores against the top sides more often. City normally win. He’s their centre forward.
But then you would argue Kane has to be in the discussion along side the likes of Drogba, Rooney, RVN, etc. He plays at feckin Spurs and has a scoring record equal to Aguero. I found a goals per game ratio, which isnt as good as goals per minute but it does include the players I wanted. If you just take Torres' time at Liverpool he is equal with RVN on 0.63/game.

1. Aguero 0.69/game
2. Henry 0.68/game
3. Kane 0.68/game


4. RVN 0.63/game
5. Suarez 0.62/game
6. Shearer 0.59/game
7. RVP 0.51/game
8. Rooney 0.42/game
9. Drogba 0.41/game
10. Torres 0.40/game
 

BlueMoonOutcast

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(Someone check my possibly terrible math....)

City average a goal every 48 minutes since he joined. Him averaging one every 106 in that time is far less impressive than it seems at first.
Eight seasons plus 22 games this season is 29,340 minutes without injury time. We've scored 758 league goals in that time so a goal every 36 minutes.
 

ManchesterYoda

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Henry - 21,305 minutes in Premier League.
176 goals and 77 assists.
121 minutes per goal.
84 minutes per goal or assist.

Aguero - 18,844 minutes in Premier League.
177 goals and 53 assists.
106 minutes per goal.
82 minutes per goal or assist.
 

tjb

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Take goals per minute out of it. At his peak Henry was far better than Aguero has ever been. When Henry was playing, you could make the case that he should have won 2 ballon d'ors. He was a consistent top 5 player in the world from 2001 to 2006. Even De Bruyne is not playing at the level that Henry was playing at during those years. He was the unanimous best player in the league at a time when the bigger clubs were boasting truly world class players. Suarez at his peak is better than Aguero, talk less of Henry, who not only dominated by scoring but also as a creator. Comparing Aguero to Henry is like comparing him to a present day neymar without the off field rubbish.

Aguero is an excellent player and I would put him ahead of Drogba or Shearer. If he played for a more popular club, I'm sure he would have recieved a lot more attention. But make no mistake, there are levels to this. Henry is the best player to have played in the Premier League, and aside from Cristiano, noone else even comes close.
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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But then you would argue Kane has to be in the discussion along side the likes of Drogba, Rooney, RVN, etc. He plays at feckin Spurs and has a scoring record equal to Aguero. I found a goals per game ratio, which isnt as good as goals per minute but it does include the players I wanted. If you just take Torres' time at Liverpool he is equal with RVN on 0.63/game.

1. Aguero 0.69/game
2. Henry 0.68/game
3. Kane 0.68/game


4. RVN 0.63/game
5. Suarez 0.62/game
6. Shearer 0.59/game
7. RVP 0.51/game
8. Rooney 0.42/game
9. Drogba 0.41/game
10. Torres 0.40/game
I agree. City score more goals than anyone. Aguero has a better goals to game ratio accordingly.

What’s your point?

Do bear in mind I think Aguero is phenomenal.
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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Eight seasons plus 22 games this season is 29,340 minutes without injury time. We've scored 758 league goals in that time so a goal every 36 minutes.
Thanks. I was using a phone browser and calc and my brain.

I blame Tim Cook.

I’ll amend the post. Thanks.

Also : If your math is correct that’s just ridiculous. A goal every 36 minutes, across an 8.5 season data set.
 

thepolice123

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How many goals did Henry scored against us? Felt like he barely scored whereas Aguero scored for fun.

I can only remember his spectacular volley and a jammy goal which hit him and went through Barthez's legs.
 

Jaae

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How many goals did Henry scored against us? Felt like he barely scored whereas Aguero scored for fun.

I can only remember his spectacular volley and a jammy goal which hit him and went through Barthez's legs.
From memory - Scored Arsenal's goal in the 6-1, scored a rocket at Highbury in 2004, and a late headed winner at the Emirates in 06/07. Also I remember him profiting from a Barthez howler around 2001 at Highbury. Think he might have scored 2 that game actually.

He scored quite a few against us.
 

KeanoMagicHat

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Feels like some people aren't taking the context of their eras into account. Henry was scoring a lot in an era where 25 goals was considered a major season and 30 goals was something special. Defending was at a higher standard, or at least teams played more defensively. Mourinho and Benitez came into the league and set the standard as defensive, like Guardiola and Klopp have set it as attacking. That's shown in the goal per game averages of those years, which are much higher now than they were in the 2000s. Last year's goal per game was the highest in Premier League history.

In that context, it has been easier for Aguero to score goals than Henry. Especially in big matches, which were often dogfights decided by the odd goal, whereas these days you see some capitulations where one team might score 4 or 5.

Aguero might have harshly missed out on some team of the years but it reveals somewhat that there was often another striker scoring as many goals as him. Salah got 32, Kane 30 and 29 in recent seasons. At Henry's peak there was no one really touching him apart from Van Nistelrooy, who was an extraordinary striker in his own right. Henry won 4 golden boots in 5 years...and missed out by 1 goal in the other one. In 2005-06, top scorer by 6 goals, in 2004-05, top scorer by 4 goals, in 2003-04, top scorer by 8 goals. As I said nobody really close. Aguero has only one Golden Boot.
 
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thepolice123

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From memory - Scored Arsenal's goal in the 6-1, scored a rocket at Highbury in 2004, and a late headed winner at the Emirates in 06/07. Also I remember him profiting from a Barthez howler around 2001 at Highbury. Think he might have scored 2 that game actually.

He scored quite a few against us.
Just checked.

It was 2 goals from 2 Barthez howlers. Ridiculous. :houllier:

The one I had from memory was this. An incredibly jammy goal and the second one he was miles offside. Can't believe we gifted him 4 goals just like that. :lol:




 

Fortitude

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The title says: PL 9, so Europe has nothing to do with anything.

In terms of PL, Henry was to the PL what Messi has been to La Liga - a goalscorer; an assister; a dribbler from deep; a set piece specialist; the undisputed main attacking threat to be stopped at all costs (from the moment he got on the ball, usually just beyond the left side of the final third of the pitch) Henry, if you want to be pedantic, was never a #9 and actually wasn't particularly good as one either because it took all his best assets from him.

He wore #14 as a homage to Cruyff and he essentially played in a manner akin to him that started off on a nominally undefinable line between being a left-sided striker and a wing-forward whilst being neither of the two, but rather a pseudo player who masqueraded as one or the other at any given time. Henry started out as a left winger and learned how to incorporate his base knowledge whilst taking bits and bobs of being an off-centre forward, but never a proper central threat. He was impossible for centrebacks to pick up unless they followed him wide and he was rarely involved in any of the central striker shenanigans, firstly because he didn't have to be, but secondly, it was because it was not his game. In his era, he was often compared and contrasted with Shevchenko and Ronaldo who were equally adept at picking the ball up from deep, but much more natural going straight through the middle as traditional strikers than Henry was.

Why am I mentioning the obvious here, or preaching to the choir? Because "better #9" for all intents and purposes, has nothing to do with Henry, so much as to say, in the traditional sense of the word, he barely played that position or role - just as with Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, you're hardly ever going to see them compared to the great strikers of their era because neither of them played that role. Even when Messi is central, he's a 'false #9' because hardly anything of the actual #9 role is relatable to his game.

The actual argument back in the day wasn't whether RVN was a better player than Henry, it was whether he was the better striker, or to put it another way: who would you pick from the two of them. It never really made sense to me, because, as stated, Henry rarely took up the positions or made the runs an actual #9 makes, whilst that's literally all Ruud did, barring a few uncharacteristic runs from deep, such as his infamous goal vs Fulham. In much the same way, comparing Aguero to Henry makes little sense when one is all about being a penalty box hotshot, and the other was doing nearly all his work a distance away from the box and would be loathe to scramble around with centrebacks looking for opportunistic scraps in the way a RVN or Aguero would.

Another way to put it, still, would be to ask who you would want on the ball in these scenarios:

- picking up the ball 50 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 40 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 30 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 20 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 15 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 10 yards from goal
- picking up the ball 5 yards from goal
- picking up the ball deep from the left side of the pitch

Anything less than 15 yards, and you're crazy if you say Henry, anything prior to 15, and you're crazy if you say Aguero. Anything at all from the left side of the pitch is a non-contest, just as 6-yard arts are the other way.

All these words just to say this discussion is like comparing an apple to an orange - both can taste great, but the only point they crossover is in being fruits.

Some would say Henry is literally the best player the PL has ever seen, whilst others will name him the best attacker, but in the traditional sense of a #9 striker: someone being fed ball through the middle of the pitch, from 30 yards or so and less, Henry has no dog in the fight as we're then in Aguero's territory comparing him with the likes of: Shearer, RVN, Kane and so on and so forth. Just as Messi and Cristiano worked with a centre-forward for the majority of their careers, so to could've Henry. Arsenal's set up was unique, but we saw for France what Henry looked like when he was more bound to the traditional #9 role, and whilst pretty good at it, the restriction of movement (he couldn't roam freely because Zidane had the attack built around him and he was the one playing free sometimes taking up positions Henry at Arsenal had all to himself) and the strictures of being a pure #9 seriously hampered and curtailed his game.

Final point to make is that the PL of Henry's era, as has been said, was a lot more cagey and defensive as opposed to the attacking free-for-all it is now for the league-winning sides of the last few years. Henry's goal tallies should be weighted against that because he was the one opening up defenses in tight games and he was the one supplying others, as opposed to the melee goal frenzies Aguero gets to partake in, which really do seem to be commonplace for City and their multi-pronged goalscoring threat.

I think Aguero's a true great of the PL era and a marvel at what he does, but outside of goal tallies, he and Henry have hardly anything to do with each other
 

Tarrou

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Kane’s goal scoring ratio is actually the most impressive considering he’s never really played for a title challenger
 

lex talionis

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Both are obviously outstanding, but it’s an easy call: Thierry Henry.

And yes, they can be compared to each other. They attacked the goal in different ways, but both were prolific scorers.