Flying Kiwis – Chris Wood’s 2019-20 Season In Review
The theme of the last twelve months of All Whites-related kiwi footy has been this incredible wave of new pros stepping onto the stage. Sarpreet Singh at Bayern Munich, most famously. Joe Bell at Viking as well. Matt Garbett at Falkenbergs. Noah Billingsley was drafted into the MLS. Liberato Cacace is on the brink of something. Callum McCowatt at the Wellington Phoenix, even. Let’s chuck in Elliot Collier breaking back into the Chicago Fire ranks, Andre De Jong in with AmaZulu in South Africa as well (before he got injured). There’s plenty more on the way from where they came from too. Fellas like Nando Pijnaker and Max Mata at Grasshoppers. Elijah Just and Dalton Wilkins just got promoted in Denmark. Marko Stamenic might have already signed in Europe but for the pandemic. Couple that with Danny Hay taking over the men’s national team with a willingness to trust these players and that right there is the new wave we’re talking about.
But arguably the most impressive campaign of any All White this season has been Chris Wood’s heroics at Burnley. 14 Premier League goals is amazing, that’s the same amount as Gabriel Jesus and tied for 13th in the division. More goals than Richarlison, Kevin De Bruyne, Son Heung-Min, Alexandre Lacazette or Roberto Firmino. He’s been at this for a few years now, this is the third year out of three that he’s scored double figures in the PL for Burnley, so the leap from ten to fourteen goals is easier to sleep on than it probably deserves to be... basically the only New Zealand footballer in history to score goals as regularly as The Woodsman has been in a major European league is Wynton Rufer and if you’re in a category where it’s only you and Wynton Rufer then you’re doing something special.
And he did this for Burnley too. A Burnley team that finished tenth on the ladder whilst putting up a club record total of wins and points along the way. Plenty of times they looked like a team worth counting out and yet over and over again they proved the doubters wrong. Similar tales have been told in the storybook of Chris Wood’s career too – this is one of those cases where player and club align gracefully.
The 2019-20 season started perfect for Burnley as they beat Southampton 3-0, with Ashley Barnes getting a double, but a tricky run of fixtures meant they didn’t win again until their sixth game. Meanwhile Chris Wood was similarly slow off the mark as he failed to find the net in any of those opening five games... well, aside from an oggie against Liverpool that is. A bit of a stitch up that one though, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s cross careened off Wood from close range way outside the area and somehow floated into the top corner. Absolute fluke. Still, Barnes was getting all the headlines with four goals in the first three games while Wood was getting shut out.
The Woodsman is a streaky player sometimes, to be fair. So no surprises that his five-game drought was then followed by a match-winning double against Norwich and then a late equaliser against Aston Villa. He also scored against his old team Leicester two games later. That one ended up in a 2-1 loss (memorable for a debatable late leveller from Wood that was ruled out by VAR for a clip on Jonny Evans’ foot in the build up) which began a three-game losing streak but they broke that drought with consecutive 3-0 wins over West Ham and Watford with Wood on the scoresheet both times (in between which was his first All Whites appearance since Anthony Hudson played him off the bench twice against Peru in the World Cup playoffs).
Thirteen games into the season and Burnley were sitting pretty in sixth and it was just before that West Ham game that both Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood signed new contracts with the club. Barnes’ keeping him a Claret until June 2022 and Wood’s until June 2023. That was a high point, no doubt, however they then lost seven of their next nine games including hidings at the hands of Man City and Spurs with Barnes having to have surgery to fix a pesky groin injury which would cost him the rest of the season. Wood did score the winner in a 1-0 victory over Newcastle in the middle of it all, so at least there was that.
A 3-0 loss to Chelsea in mid-January was the seventh of those seven defeats (in which Wood had his nose broken early yet still played 90 minutes and didn’t miss a game because of it – although he did sport a mean ol’ shiner for a couple matches). A week later the Clarets beat Leicester City 2-1 with Chris Wood getting the first of those goals as Burnley came from behind to win... and in their very next match they beat Manchester United 2-0 at Old Trafford with Wood and Jay Rodriguez both scoring.
Burnley went unbeaten into the pandemic hiatus after that including draws against Arsenal and Spurs (though they did get knocked out of the FA Cup by Norwich in the middle of it all). Wood scored the goal against Tottenham. Four months later football returned and Burnley, their squad down to the bare bones thanks to injuries and expired contracts (Burnley were the only team in the PL to use fewer subs after the restart than they averaged before it, despite the extra two allowed), lost 5-0 to Manchester City first game of the restart. Wood was missing from that one as he would be from the next two matches with an Achilles tendon injury stemming from the lockdown period.
No dramas, that’s when that Burnley defence really peaked. After letting in five against Man City they only let in another five combined in the final eight games. Wood returned and scored in each of their final three matches – including a stoppage time equalising penalty against Wolves and an overhead kick vs Norwich. Defeat to Brighton on the last day of the season meant they finished tenth (a win would have put them eighth) albeit with the same points total (54pts) that got them seventh a couple terms ago.
All things considered it was a pretty fantastic season for Burnley. With a small squad to begin with they were rattled with injuries throughout and yet continued to find a way to win right as things would start looking dark. That’s been a common tendency under Sean Dyche’s leadership. And for Chris Wood in particular, to score as consistently as he did when he spent half the season with Ash Barnes as his main partner and then half a season with Jay Rodriguez alongside him... those are two quite different styles of player and it just goes to show that Wood is much more than a mere system man.
Chris Wood’s 14 goals (from 32 games, three of them as a sub) are the most that any Burnley player has ever scored in a Premier League season and the most for the club in a top flight season since the 70s. He played his 100th career Prem game when he came on as a sub against West Ham and is up to 35 goals in total, 34 of them for Burnley – trailing only Ash Barnes’ 38 for the club... although he’s got a long way to go to catch the all-time top flight goalscorers for the Clarets...
Of those 14 goals this season he scored five with his head, four with his right boot, and five with his left. Not a player in the entire league scored more headed goals than Wood did this time around. Raúl Jiménez and Virgil van Dijk both equalled him with five but bear in mind those two played every game (VVD played every minute) while Woody missed six along the way and started on the bench three times.
The penalty that he scored against Wolves was actually the first he’d ever taken in the Premier League, despite having an excellent career record from the spot at his previous clubs (wouldn’t trust this stat entirely but it seems he’s scored 18/21 in his professional club career – he’s definitely scored his last 11 in a row (in all comps) going back to his first season at Leeds).
And this will come as less of a surprise but all 14 of his goals came from within the penalty area... in fact 34/35 of his career PL goals have come from inside the area. The man’s got a zone and the closer he is to the goal, the more deadly he becomes. No player scored more goals from in the six yard box this season than The Woodsman.
Woodsy was tied for 13th in total goals but he also missed a decent chunk of games. If he’s played those extra six matches then he might well have snuck into the top ten. The only player with more goals than him who played fewer minutes was Sergio Agüero and Wood also did his work with fewer opportunities as well – his 14 goals coming from only 65 total shot attempts (31 on target), fewer than any other player in the top twenty (effectively meaning everyone with 11+ goals).
But of course it wasn’t only the goals. He also retained his title for the Golden Flag... aka the most times caught offside this season. Didn’t quite run away with it like he did last time around when he raised the bat for a half-century but still got the nudge.
He actually had a word to say about that prestigious honour recently, speaking with The Athletic...
Chris Wood: “I have to stretch the game and create space for the midfield boys so they can have room to play, and so Dwight [McNeil] can come into the pocket. If I just came short, it would make it easy for defenders... It really doesn’t bother me, getting caught offside, because I know that the one time that I don’t, I’ll be in on goal.”
In other words it’s a necessary risk from the way he plays... the way which has led to more goals than any other Burnley players has ever scored in a Premier League campaign before, putting them away with an efficiency that stacks up against the best strikers in the entire division. Yeah pretty sure you can handle that trade-off.
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