FOR SOMEONE purporting to be a striker, Leon Best fired blanks at a good many of the clubs he played for.
Such was his time at Brighton where he failed to get on the scoresheet in 13 games (six as a starter, seven as a substitute).
When he featured for AFC Bournemouth in the third tier, he fared slightly better. He managed three goals in 14 starts plus three as a substitute when on loan from Premier League Southampton during the 2006-07 season.
The somewhat derogatory phrase ‘journeyman’ was tailor-made for the likes of Best, who appeared for 13 different league clubs, failing to score for five of them and only registering double figure tallies at three.
Brighton supporters, on the whole, are normally supportive of anyone who appears for their team, but feelings boiled over at Best’s apparent lack of desire when pulling on the Seagulls stripes.
He was part of the struggling 2014-15 side which narrowly avoided the drop from the Championship, and I recall him being booed when he came on as a substitute at the Amex. On reflection, of course, such derision was unlikely to improve his demeanour.
The keyboard warriors of North Stand Chat weren’t slow to vent their anger, with one correspondent suggesting: “We’ve not seen much in the way of desire, endeavour, hunger or appetite from someone you would hope feels he has something to prove.”
Chris Hughton had not long been in the manager’s chair when he was casting around for players to help Albion climb away from the foot of the table.
Perhaps not unreasonably, he turned to a player who’d scored goals for him in the Premier League during his time at Newcastle United.
Hughton told the Argus: “I know Leon very well, having signed him during my time at Newcastle and I am delighted to have him here.
“He is a strong, physical presence, he knows the Championship and knows the position we are in. We wanted new faces, to freshen up the squad, and Leon will add competition alongside our existing strikers.
“I signed him previously at Newcastle. I know he can be a very good player and he did very well for me both in the Championship and Premier League. He also had a very good spell with Newcastle after I left the club.”
Best scored 10 in 46 games for the Magpies but, at his next club, Blackburn Rovers, he managed only two in 16, hence them sending him out on loan.
While Best had scored five in 16 playing on loan at Sheffield Wednesday in 2013-14, he scored a big fat zero in 20 games for Derby County earlier in the 2014-15 season so perhaps expectations should not have been high when he arrived at Brighton on 20 January 2015.
Nevertheless, Hughton told Brian Owen: “I am very pleased he is here. He gives us another attacking option and I hope he can produce the same form he did for me when we worked together at Newcastle.” In short, he didn’t.
Born in Nottingham on 19 September 1986, his first steps into the professional game came with his local side Notts County. When international recognition came calling, he chose to represent his mother’s birth country, the Republic of Ireland, and was capped at under 17, under 19 and under 21 levels before gaining seven full caps in 2009-10.
Southampton snapped up Best in 2004 and gave him his league debut aged 18, ironically against his future employer, Newcastle.
But opportunities were limited with the Saints and over the course of three years on their books they loaned him out to QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Bournemouth and Yeovil Town.
In 2007, Best transferred to then Championship side Coventry City for £650,000 and arguably his most successful goalscoring spell came during his time there, as he netted 23 goals in 104 appearances over three seasons.
It prompted Hughton to spend £1.5m of Mike Ashley’s money to take Best to Tyneside on 1 February 2010.
Maybe the warning bells should have been sounding in those first few months on Tyneside when he didn’t register a goal in 13 Championship appearances and fell behind Andy Carroll and Peter Lovenkrands in the pecking order.
Although he managed a couple of goals in pre-season matches, the early part of the 2010-11 season was marred by a cruciate knee ligament injury. Nevertheless, when he returned to action in the January, he did it in some style, bagging a hat-trick in a 5-0 win over West Ham. He got a further three goals before injury ruled him out once again.
In the following season, he went 12 games without scoring but in the summer of 2012, Blackburn Rovers paid £3m to take him to Ewood Park – only for him to pick up an anterior cruciate knee injury one month into the season, ruling him out of action for six months.
The temporary move to Brighton was one of three loans away from Blackburn before they finally released him by mutual consent in July 2015.
It wasn’t until November 2015 he managed to find another club, pitching up for six months at Championship side Rotherham United. When he couldn’t agree terms on a new deal with the Millers, he instead moved to Ipswich Town, ostensibly as a replacement for Daryl Murphy.
He made six starts and six appearances as a substitute without scoring and, by January 2017, manager Mick McCarthy had lost patience with him and declared he wouldn’t play another game for the club.
Released by Town in the summer of 2017, Best managed to secure a two-month deal with Charlton Athletic in November 2017 but he sustained a knee injury on New Year’s Day 2018 and hasn’t played since.
“The bigger the atmosphere, the more I like it. For instance, my best two games this season were against Arsenal, and in the replay there was a crowd of 47,000.”
Between them, they literally couldn’t stop scoring goals, and the success of their striking partnership restricted Morgan to only two starts in 1976-77. He was on the sub’s bench throughout that first promotion season under Alan Mullery, and he scored just once in 16 appearances as the no.12.
In parallel lines 