Ben Brereton Diaz and the longest runs without winning a Premier League match

It’s early days, however you concern Southampton may set a number of undesirable information this season.

After seven video games, they’re winless, with solely a degree to their title and simply 4 targets scored.

At the very least the membership has the faint afterglow of success from successful promotion final season, although there’s one member of their staff who doesn’t even have that — and, as an alternative, has inside his sights one of many extra undesirable particular person information round.

Step ahead Ben Brereton Diaz, who has performed 20 Premier League video games in his profession to this point — six for Southampton, 14 for Sheffield United final season — with out successful any. That’s the report for probably the most video games performed by somebody who has by no means gained a Premier League recreation, forward of Marvin Sordell on 17, and Emanuel Villa on 16.

Not like that duo, he nonetheless has an opportunity of celebrating his first victory. Nonetheless, the Chile worldwide can be at risk of setting the report for probably the most video games performed by a person earlier than being concerned in a Premier League win (see desk beneath).

This, hopefully, is just not designed to denigrate or mock Brereton Diaz. He has simply been unlucky sufficient to play for a few struggling sides. You might argue he has been a part of these struggling sides, so bears at the very least a number of the accountability for the failure to win. However with six targets in 14 video games for Sheffield United, he ended the season as their joint-top scorer regardless of solely becoming a member of in January, whereas he has ceaselessly seemed like Southampton’s most threatening attacker this time period.

His groups haven’t gained any video games, but it surely’s not essentially his fault.

Brereton Diaz, then with Sheffield United, shoots in opposition to Tottenham final season (Barrington Coombs/PA Photographs through Getty Photographs)

You might even argue that Brereton Diaz is sort of being punished for being good. In the event you’re a horrible participant in a horrible staff, you in all probability aren’t going to remain in that staff. However in case you’re a good participant in a horrible staff, you’ll be on the market each week, your win-loss report on the mercy of the dysfunction round you.

In any case, the record of gamers who’ve taken a very long time to get their first win isn’t precisely stuffed with full duds.

Take Gareth Bale, who appeared in 24 video games for Tottenham earlier than he claimed his first Premier League victory. His was a barely completely different case, as a result of it wasn’t all the way down to him becoming a member of a struggling staff, however extra an odd quirk of his first two seasons at Tottenham; a mixture of coincidence, poor type and harm conspiring to maintain him out of the video games Spurs gained in that point.

Bale joined Spurs from Southampton in 2007 and, whereas he needed to wait a very long time for his first Premier League success, he did win in his fourth look for his or her first staff once they beat Anorthosis Famagusta 6-1 within the UEFA Cup.

Having appeared sporadically within the following months, his season was led to December by an ankle harm. He returned firstly of the next season, when Spurs infamously took simply two factors from their first eight video games, however missed their first victory of the season as a result of he had been despatched off within the earlier match. From there, he was out and in of the staff, variously injured or out of favour, however his presence all the time coincided with attracts or defeats and the staff gained loads of instances in his absence.

However his winless Premier League run grew to become a operating joke, one of many early soccer social media memes after Opta noticed the unlucky statistic. In the long run, it spanned 1,607 minutes over these 24 video games, lasting 762 days and taking in three Spurs managers.

He ultimately broke the streak on a little bit of a technicality: he got here on within the closing phases of Tottenham’s victory over Burnley in September 2009, once they had been already 4-0 up and ultimately gained 5-0. And that was a deliberate transfer by then Spurs supervisor Harry Redknapp, to shake the undesirable statistical millstone. Redknapp instructed talkSPORT in 2019: “I caught him on in opposition to Burnley… with six minutes to go. I believed, ‘He can’t mess this up!’”

He didn’t. And over the next years, he went on to win scores of video games mainly on his personal so, by the point he left for Actual Madrid in 2013, he was considerably in credit score.

“It was a bit annoying that folks went on about that statistic but it surely didn’t have an effect on me in any respect,” Bale instructed The Guardian in 2010 after issues had rotated. “It was simply a kind of issues that freakily occurred. I knew as quickly as I received my probability to play we’d win a number of video games and it’d be finished.”

Bale needed to wait 24 video games to style victory with Tottenham within the Premier League (Clive Rose/Getty Photographs)

The present unlucky report holder is Scottish ahead Oliver Burke, who took an excruciating 25 video games to style Premier League victory for the primary time.

Burke performed his first Premier League recreation for West Brom in August 2017 after becoming a member of from RB Leipzig, however accidents ensured he solely performed in 15 matches, none of which West Brom gained. And in his defence, they didn’t win many with out him, both: this was the season during which they had been relegated, went via 4 managers and endured an ill-fated mid-season journey to Barcelona the place a gaggle of gamers stole a taxi from exterior a McDonald’s.

As for Burke, he reappeared within the Premier League a few years later, signing for Sheffield United on the finish of the summer time 2020 switch window. Once more, he wasn’t a daily, so needed to wait till the January of that season earlier than contributing to a win, which got here in opposition to Newcastle.

The Blades had been additionally relegated, so Burke has solely performed in two Premier League seasons, each of which have ended within the drop. Poor Oliver. He’s at the moment with Werder Bremen after a few injury-hit loans at Millwall and Birmingham Metropolis.

Rob Earnshaw is one other title within the high 10 who can’t be completely blamed for not gathering a victory for a very long time. It took 18 video games earlier than he gained one for West Brom in 2004-05, however he did rattle up 11 targets that season, was the Baggies’ high scorer and, by way of minutes per aim, he was second solely to Thierry Henry in the entire division that season.

“The context of that season and that staff was numerous new gamers,” Earnshaw tells The Athletic. “It was a staff that wasn’t actually anticipated to be within the Premier League. We had been making an attempt to determine one another out: I had about 5 completely different strike companions in that season. You’re all the time making an attempt to get these relationships, in order that’s maybe why it took so lengthy (to get a win).”

Earnshaw in a uncommon second of pleasure for West Brom within the autumn of 2004 (Nick Potts – PA Photographs/PA Photographs through Getty Photographs)

That chopping and altering of the staff’s ahead line was additionally a purpose why Earnshaw missed their uncommon victories. West Brom received their first three factors of their eighth league recreation, a 2-1 win over Bolton in October, however Earnshaw was an unused substitute. Which itself presents a curious dilemma: while you haven’t gained a recreation but your self, how do you are feeling when your staff wins with out you contributing?

“It’s a really unusual factor, a really bizarre dynamic,” he says. “No 1, you’re all the time tremendous blissful while you win. I used to be all the time the primary one to rejoice and congratulate my team-mates. However there’s all the time a bizarre feeling of disappointment. The No 1 factor is, that little child in you simply desires to play soccer and win video games.”

Jan Aage Fjortoft is one other unlucky title on the record, having taken 20 video games to earn his first first victory with Swindon in 1993-94. Swindon solely gained two video games within the first half of that season, and Fjortoft missed each of them. However, in contrast to Earnshaw, he wasn’t a sufferer of squad rotation or harm: he missed these video games as a result of he wasn’t scoring targets.

After shifting to Swindon for a club-record charge from Fast Vienna following their promotion to the Premier League, Fjortoft didn’t discover the web in any respect earlier than the flip of the 12 months.

“You begin pondering, ‘Perhaps the best way I play doesn’t match right here — perhaps I’ve to vary’,” he tells The Athletic. “That’s the worst part, as a result of then you definitely’re going nowhere. You’re constructing as much as that second, hopefully, while you get that first aim. However then you definitely realise you simply need to do what you do, as a result of that’s ok.

“It was a really testing time, and the factor that saved me was I used to be scoring targets for Norway, although that made it much more sophisticated in my head. Finally, I wasn’t within the staff as a lot, which is regular: Swindon had paid some huge cash for me to attain targets.

“I used to be extra irritated that I didn’t break the code. I had performed in opposition to these gamers earlier than for Norway. We’d gained in opposition to England. Why couldn’t I break this factor known as the Premier League?”

Fjortoft celebrates scoring a aim for Swindon in opposition to Manchester United (Andy Heading/EMPICS through Getty Photographs)

Issues reached a nadir when Fjortoft — nonetheless winless and goalless — performed a reserve recreation in opposition to Wycombe Wanderers on Christmas Eve during which he was “out of twenty-two gamers… the worst on the pitch”. With the 1994 World Cup looming and his spot within the Norway staff beneath menace, he organized a mortgage again to his former membership Lillestrom.

However then Keith Scott, who had been taking part in up entrance for Swindon as an alternative of Fjortoft, was cup-tied for a recreation in opposition to Ipswich within the FA Cup. Fjortoft performed, scored and stored his place for the league recreation in opposition to Tottenham a number of days later. In that recreation he lastly secured his first league aim, and first win within the English high flight, after 20 unsuccessful makes an attempt, as they beat Spurs 2-1.

“It was improbable,” he says. “There was a variety of aid for myself, however we beat Tottenham, and we had been allowed to dream. Might we make it? Might we get sufficient factors to remain up?”

Fjortoft had a sensational second half to the season: having failed to attain in any respect in his first 20 video games, he managed 11 in his subsequent 16, though it wasn’t sufficient to avoid wasting Swindon from relegation, broadly all the way down to them conceding a whopping 100 targets.

Finally, it could be massively unfair to deal with Brereton Diaz or any of the gamers talked about right here as figures of enjoyable. Not least as a result of, by even making it to the Premier League, they’re already within the high one per cent of the highest one per cent.

“Once you get an opportunity to play within the Premier League, the taking part in is the precise achievement,” provides Earnshaw. “That’s the dream. You’re taking part in in opposition to the easiest.”

(Prime picture: Alex Dodd – CameraSport through Getty Photographs)