There was some chatter over the weekend in the Tottenham vs. Stoke City Highlights post about Clint Dempsey’s season with Tottenham.  While Dempsey doesn’t have the flashy goal total like he did in 2010-11, he has been involved in the offense and has provided some assists.  In fact, he has 12 goals and seven assists in 42 games across all competitions this season.  If you go back to last year and just look at Premier League games, he has 24 goals and 11 assists.

So that got me thinking, how many guys have recorded at least 20 goals and 10 assists in Premier League play since the beginning of the 2010-11 season?  And here is your answer.

Again, Dempsey is among some good players.

Also of note, I went with Transfermarkt’s assists totals, although they seem to give out a lot more assists than other sites like WhoScored.com.  That all said, Dempsey had 11 assists with Transfermarkt and 10 assists with WhoScored.  But it was way different for other players.

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but here are few updates of things with Clint Dempsey scoring his 56th career Premier League goal over the weekend.  With the goal, he now has six goals on the season, becoming the sixth player to score 6+ goals in each of the last six seasons.

His goal on Sunday was also his fourth against Manchester City in his career.  Manchester City is one of six teams that Dempsey has scored at least four Premier League goals against in his career.

The goal on Sunday was also his fourth in his career at White Hart Lane, the most of any stadium not named Craven Cottage.

As for some other little nuggets.

* From what I can find (I have seen a couple different lists, but mixing and matching has led me to this answer), Dempsey’s 56 career Premier League goals are tied for the 62nd most in the Premier League era (since 1992-93) and the 18th most among current players.

* Dempsey didn’t make his Premier League debut until January 20, 2007.  His 56 goals are the 12th most in the Premier League since that date.

* All four of Dempsey’s goals against Manchester City have come since 2008-09.  Dempsey is one six players with 4+ goals against Man City since 2008-09 (also Wayne Rooney, Darren Bent, Jermain Defoe, Frank Lampard and Andy Carroll).

* And Dempsey has scored 10 combined goals against Manchester City (four), Chelsea (four) and Manchester United (two), tied for the second most since 2008-09.  Darren Bent leads the way with 11 goals against those three teams, while Dempsey is tied with Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie and Fernando Torres.

So yeah, Clint Dempsey is pretty good.

I did one of these back in March and decided to update it since Jozy Altidore had a hat trick over the weekend.  This is looking at top-flight leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal and Netherlands (looking at goals for their club teams in all league/cup/European competitions).  Jozy is one of 10 players with 28+ goals in 2012-13.

There is not a lot to this Inside the Numbers.  Just wanted to update the goal-scoring leaderboard for the current 2012-13 season for players in the top-flight leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal and the Netherlands (looking at goals for their club teams in all league/cup/European competitions).  Jozy is now sitting in ninth place with 24 goals across all competitions.

Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey both had big weekends.  Jozy notched a hat trick, while Clint scored in stoppage time against Manchester United (and ended the two week drought on our goal tracker).  The two Americans have been the top goal scoring Yanks in Europe over the past two seasons and here is what they are up to numbers-wise after this weekend’s action.

* Jozy Altidore’s 14 league goals in 2012-13 are tied for the second most in the Eredivisie this season, while his 29 league goals since the beginning of last season are the fourth most in the Eredivisie over that time frame.

* Saturday was Jozy Altidore’s second hat trick in Eredivisie play in his career.  Other Americans with hat tricks in the Eredivisie include Earnie Stewart (twice) and Michael Bradley.  Steven Goff (and his readers) put together an unofficial list of American hat tricks in Europe back in 2010 when Benny Feilhaber recorded one for AGF Aarhus.  Since then, I can think of Jozy’s two for AZ, Matt Taylor against Rot Weiss Ahlen in the German Cup in 2011-12, Matt Taylor against Werder Bremen in the German Cup in 2012-13, Mike Grella with four goals against AFC Bournemouth in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in 2011-12, Clint Dempsey against Charlton Athletic in the FA Cup in 2011-12 and Clint Dempsey against Newcastle United in 2011-12.

* Saturday was also Jozy’s ninth multi-goal game in league play since joining AZ.  Here is where that ranks among players in the top-flight leagues in England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands in league play since the beginning of the 2011-12 season.

* While he has five multi-goal games in league play in 2012-13.

* Jozy Altidore and Wilfried Bony are the only Eredivisie players with 14+ league goals in 2011-12 and 2012-13 so far.

* Moving onto Clint Dempsey.  Dempsey scored against Manchester United for the second game this season.  Since 2008-09, only five players have scored in both games against Manchester United in a single Premier League season:  Clint Dempsey (2012-13), Demba Ba (2011-12), Robin van Persie (2011-12), Frank Lampard (2010-11) and Fernando Torres (2009-10).  And Deuce’s goals against Manchester United this season come after he went scoreless in his first nine career PL games against the Red Devils.

* With Dempsey notching his fifth league goal of the season, he is now one of six players with 5+ PL goals in each of the last six seasons.

* Dempsey now has 55 career goals in Premier League play, 23rd most among active players and 11th most since he scored his first career PL goal against Liverpool on May 5, 2007.  It is sort of hard to find an accurate all-time list in the Premier League era (since 1992-93), but from what I can find, Dempsey’s 55 goals would be tied for the 63rd most.

* Of Dempsey’s 55 league goals, they have come against 23 different teams.  He has failed to score against the following teams in Premier League play:  Arsenal (12 games), Hull City (4), Swansea City (3), Blackpool (2), Sheffield United (1), Burnley (1), Derby County (1) and Fulham (1).

* And of his 67 goals in Europe across all competitions, 14 have come in the month of January, his most for any single month.

I have tweeted in the past about Anderlecht winning a bunch when Sacha Kljestan plays and in Brian Sciaretta’s latest interview with Kljestan, he got a stat from Daniel Renders (former Anderlecht assistant coach who is now in the club’s front office) about the staggering difference when Kljestan plays/doesn’t play.

Renders’ analysis shows that in Anderlecht’s last 108 games (for a total of 324 possible points), the club has won 72.8% of all possible points with Kljestan on the field. In the 22 games where Kljestan did not play, the club accumulated just 42.4% of the points (28 out of 66).

While it would take me eleventy billion hours to compare this to everyone in Europe, I was able to look up something to compare to other midfielders in Europe.  I stuck with midfielders to stay among his “peers” and it cuts down on a lot of people to look into/while moving him further up the list.

So looking at midfielders in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands who have played at least 40 league games since the beginning of the 2011-12 season (40 seems to be about 75% of games for most teams, so looking at guys who are regular starters/contributors), here is where Kljestan (and his mustache) stacks up in Europe among players when they they play.

A couple things of note.  Basically everyone on Bareclona is a midfielder, but I tried to look up where guys play on various sites so a couple guys are missing.  Javier Mascherano has mainly been a center back the last two years, Lionel Messi is a forward and Andres Iniesta is missing since he has played in 39 games (just missed the cut!).  Otherwise Iniesta would be #1 with 2.62 points per game played.

The other thing that sticks out to me is that Anderlecht has lost only three league games out of 53 when Kljestan plays.  That is pretty tough to do.

Granted one player can’t control a team’s success/failure (unless it is Messi or Jeff Agoos), but Kljestan is among some good company.

A lot of the talk in the soccer world over the last two weeks has been about Lionel Messi and his 90 goals for club and country in the 2012 calendar year.  That is just an insane number.  While he is not Messi, Jozy Altidore has put together a pretty good year as well.

Altidore has scored 25 goals across all competitions for AZ Alkmaar since January 1 (updated with today’s latest goal), including 21 goals in league play.  I wanted to see where that stacked up with other players across the various leagues in Europe and decided to look at the top goal scorers for 2012.  So here are the top goal scorers when only looking at league goals since January 1 and looking at the top-flight leagues in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Obviously the competition is not as high in the Eredivisie as it is in England, Spain, Italy or Germany, but it is still impressive to be mentioned with the names above.  One other thing of note, the Eredivisie is a goal-scoring league as you can see by the average number of goals per game so far in 2012-13 compared to the other leagues.

Also, the next highest American in one of those seven leagues is Clint Dempsey with 14 league goals in 2012 for Fulham and Tottenham.  That is one more than the 13 that he scored in 2011.

I have been sitting on this since about last June once I realized that Michael Bradley was approaching his 70th cap and was only 24-years-old.  Then we had to wait two months for the next game and Bradley did not travel to Mexico (while also turning 25-years-old in late July).  Then he picked up an injury before the September qualifiers and missed those games.

And now we sit a couple days before a qualifier against Antigua & Barbuda and Bradley should finally earn his 70th cap unless he picks up Fabian Johnson’s flu while rolling his ankle while looking for his lost passport.  And anything is possible with how this week has gone.

Once he touches the field on Friday, he will become the 31st player in US Soccer history to reach the 70th cap plateau at 25 years and 73 days old.  Of the 30 previous players, only three players have reached that mark at a younger age. Here is a look at the top five youngest to reach that mark.

Two of those three players are pretty popular names within US Soccer (Landon Donovan and Tony Meola), while Chris Henderson is not as widely known.  Even I had to do some wikipedia-hunting to find out some more information on him (I know of him, but I just don’t remember him on the USMNT that much).

Chris Henderson Fun Fact #1:  Of the 30 players to have 70+ caps for the USMNT, Henderson is the only player to never play in a World Cup game.  He was on the 1990 World Cup roster at 19-years-old, but did not play during any of the three games in Italy.

Chris Henderson Fun Fact #2:   If this site would have existed during the 1990s, we would have covered his time at FSV Frankfurt (1994-95) and Stabæk (1995-96).

But (likely) congrats to Michael Bradley for earning his 70th cap on Friday.  As for someone else who could be approaching this list in the near future, Jozy Altidore is only 22-years-old and already has 51 caps to his name.  But who knows where his USMNT career goes with the latest flare up with Jurgen Klinsmann.

While all the talk leading up to this past weekend’s game was about Landon Donovan and his “lack of fire”, it looked to me like he still has a lot left to offer despite appearing at the top or near the top of many of the USMNT career records.  And on Saturday, he took over another record with his 125th career start, passing Jeff Agoos at 124.  Also of note, Carlos Bocanegra is now tied for sixth alongside Tony Meola with his 97th career start.  Here is a look at those names.

Landon Donovan also added three goals to his already USMNT record of career goals, which now stands at 49, 15 more than the next name on the list (Eric Wynalda).  He also now holds the record for most hat tricks in a career with three, which he previously shared with Peter Millar.  Here are the top five goal scorers in US Soccer history.

I wanted to take this a step further and see where Donovan stands among other top scorers for other countries.  After doing some research, which was sort of hard as various sites/federations have some differing numbers, I was able to determine in my best efforts that his 49 career goals is the third most among CONCACAF players all-time.

As for some other countries of note, Manchester United legend Bobby Charlton leads England with his 49 goals.  The US’ opponent on Wednesday, Brazil, is led by Pele and his 77 goals.  Donovan’s LA Galaxy teammate Robbie Keane leads Ireland with 53 goals.  And David Villa (Spain) and Thierry Henry (France) each lead their countries with 51  goals.

Hopefully Donovan has a few more starts and goals left in him for a few more years.

With the roster for upcoming friendlies and qualifiers announced, I thought it’d be interesting to see how the composition of players and leagues has changed over the last three cycles. They aren’t perfect comparisons— while Jürgen Klinsmann has opted to start with 27 to be trimmed down to a set 23 in a tournament-style camp, Bob Bradley went with a larger pool in 2008 and Bruce Arena started with a smaller roster in 2004. All situations, of course, were different with friendlies and qualifying formats.

Any clubs/leagues referred to are for the previous season (ie. not considering promotion, relegation, or transfers).

2004
MLS: 13 players (59%)
England: 5 players (23%)
- 4 Premier League
- 1 Football League First Division (now the Championship)
Germany: 3 players (14%)
- 1 1st Bundesliga
- 2 2nd Bundesliga
France: 1 player (5%)

2008
MLS: 13 players (39%)
England: 8 players (24%)
- 7 Premier League
- 1 Football League Championship
Germany: 3 players (9%)
- 2 1st Bundesliga
- 1 2nd Bundesliga
Austria: 1 player (3%)
Belgium: 1 player (3%)
Denmark: 1 player (3%)
Mexico: 1 player (3%)
Netherlands: 1 player (3%)
Norway: 1 player (3%)
Out of Contract: 1 player (3%)
Portugal: 1 player (3%)
Scotland: 1 player (3%)

Notes: Nate Jaqua was out of contract, but he had been playing in the Austrian 3rd tier that spring. Dominic Cervi had been drafted by the Chicago Fire, but he did not sign and was unemployed until signing with Celtic in October.

2012
MLS: 7 players (26%)
Germany: 6 players (22%)
- 5 1st Bundesliga
- 1 Regionalliga
Mexico: 4 players (15%)
England: 3 players (11%)
Denmark: 2 players (7%)
Scotland: 2 players (7%)
Italy: 1 player (4%)
Portugal 1 player (4%)
Netherlands: 1 player (4%)

The MLS contingent has dipped again (from 59% to 39% to 26%). Notably, the English representation has dropped as well— in 2004 it was 23% and in 2008 it was 24%, now it’s 11%. The pool was comprised of 82% players from English-speaking countries in 2004 and 63% in 2008; the percentage is just 37% now.

In addition to the increase in players from Germany (always several players), there are significantly more players based in Mexico. After having more players scattered in 2008 (seven different nations had a lone player), this group is less widespread. There is only one player this time primarily playing outside a top division (and he’s technically under contract to a 1st Bundesliga club) as opposed to three each of the last two cycles.

Interestingly, the percentage of players in Europe hasn’t changed significantly. 42% of 2008′s pool played in North American (MLS + Mexico); 41% of this cycle’s camp does.