I’m not the first to get a a little wound up about the constant barrage of “Premier League records”. To my mind, something valuable is lost with the seeming insistence that football performance only became relevant in 1992 with the advent of the Premier League.

But games do change, and the statistics one might have thought impressive in one era might be so-so in another. It makes things difficult to compare. But that doesn’t mean we should not try.

Thanks to Dan Daly and Bill James for their input to this piece for the Irish Times print edition of Wednesday December 2nd, 2015.

To much acclaim, Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy has claimed the English Premier League record for goals scored in consecutive games. It is good, then, that Jimmy Dunne’s 1931/32 streak of scoring in 12 successive top flight games is getting some media attention. The Irishman holds the record in English top flight soccer, after all. Is it right to sacrifice pre-1992 soccer history to the breathless glory of the Premier League?

Soccer wouldn’t be alone in changing over the last 100 years. The NFL introduced the forward pass; the NBA, the three-point line. Cricket has just played its first day/night Test match. For historians and number-crunchers such changes provide a challenge in asking how good a performance was compared to those from the record books.

Dan Daly, longtime sports columnist with the Washington Times, speaking about the NFL, said sports fans tend to live in the present and “lots of the younger sportswriters don’t tend to pay attention to things that haven’t happened in their own lifetimes”.

In considering players past, one must also consider a changed game. “If you can find anyone, say, pre-1960, who’s doing something comparable statistically to what they do now that’s just off the charts.” In English soccer, that works the opposite way.

While English top-flight soccer has seen goalscoring peaks and troughs from season to season, on the all-time list of English top-flight goalscorers a disproportionate number enjoyed careers spanning the 1925-1935 seasons. It was a time of goalscoring gluttony where goals were scored a third more often than today. In 1925/26 two players would keep a player onside, rather than three.

This change resulted in a sudden and sustained jump in goals from that season onwards with the rate falling over time only to jump again in the 1950s. Since the late 60s (a time when the tactical substitute was introduced) the average number of goals per top-flight game has on the whole remained relatively level. Dixie Dean and other goalscorers between the two World Wars were dancing to a different footballing tune.

How can one define an “era” in sport? Some potential dividing lines that influential sports analyst Bill James set out in a 2012 essay are useful. Have there been rule changes? Structural changes? Changes in how the game is played? Radical changes in statistical standards? Significant external events? Each of those boxes has been ticked at various times in English soccer history…

Read more at the Irish Times, along with a nice graphic showing the changing level of goalscoring in England’s top flight since 1892: http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/numbers-game-change-brings-difficulties-to-player-analysis-1.2450848