Jamie Vardy: The abnormal icon of the past Premier League decade

HALFWAY through Vincent Kompany’s testimonial, Robin van Persie played a neat one-two with Tim Cahill and blithely curled the ball past Shay Given. It was a finish straight from the turn of the decade, when the Dutchman was the Premier League’s premier forward, scorer of 74 goals in 101 games between 2010 and 2013. Twenty six of those goals came in 2012-13 for Manchester United as he led the club to the final title of the Alex Ferguson-era and, as it stands, the final title of any era. This weekend United face Leicester City, a club who not only have won the Premier League more recently than Van Persie’s old side, but have the star striker from their own title season in some of the best form of his career.

Jamie Vardy remains the most atypical striker of the Premier League decade; only three and a half years younger than Van Persie, he is just 17 goals away from a century, having made his debut in the competition in his late 20s, and with almost 40% of his goals coming against the Big Six. Leicester’s title win in 2016 appalled the royalty of English football so much that they have occupied the top six places in each of the last three seasons, the first time in English top-flight history this has ever happened. Only one man has consistently terrified them in that time and that person plays up front for Leicester. Great players maintain their standards against the best teams, only your Jamie Vardys actually improve.

But in the unlikely case that you need more convincing about Vardy’s sheer importance to the 2010s? Try these:

– In 2017-18 he became the first player in Premier League history to score against Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in the same season. There are entire clubs who have never managed that.

– Has scored the first Premier League goal for each of Leicester’s last four permanent managers (Ranieri, Shakespeare, Puel and Rodgers). You know how it works: the new man comes in and muses to his assistant: “You know, Vardy’s getting on now, could be time to freshen things up”. Vardy: “no”

– He took just four years and 315 days to go from scoring a non-league goal to scoring a Champions League goal. “But where the pathways in the modern game??”

– Has scored the same number of European Cup/Champions League goals as Diego Maradona (2). There are caveats, there always are, but it’s true.

– Holds the Premier League record for ending on the losing side in the most games he has scored in (nine times in 2017-18). “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, get banged.”

– And finest of all, he holds the Premier League record for scoring in consecutive games, netting in 11 games in a row between August and November 2015. An extraordinary run of matches which not only fails to get enough recognition now, even at the time certain churlish elements in the media seemed very keen to downplay it, digging up a pre-war character called ‘Jimmy Dunne’ who did it in 12 successive matches. Dunne was notable by his absence when Ruud van Nistelrooy scored in 10 in a row back in 2003, which seems curious.

Manchester United go into Saturday’s game having scored only two more goals than Vardy since Brendan Rodgers was made Leicester manager in March. Rodgers reminds them of that first season after Ferguson, 2013-14, when he almost guided Liverpool to the league title as Old Trafford squirmed under the tutelage of David Moyes. A season later Vardy arrived in the league to little fanfare. 12 months after that he was a champion, with as many Premier League titles as David De Gea and Juan Mata combined. Not all superstars are brought through Premier League academies, not all heroes wear capes and not all footballers are Jamie Vardy. Yes, his time at the very top is slowly passing but unfortunately for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, there’s still a bit left in the tank yet.