Leeds United forward Joe Gelhardt has praised the heading ability of Liverpool’s Diogo Jota.
Speaking in an interview with Sky Sports, Gelhardt claimed that the Liverpool player is ‘ridiculously’ good at scoring with his head. So good in fact, that teammate Patrick Bamford showed him clips of Jota to improve his own game
“Patrick Bamford always gets on to me and helps me as well. He’s like a mentor. He always speaks to me about where I should be or how I can score more goals. He’s older than me and he’s got a lot more experience, so anything he tells me, I’m going to listen,” said the 20-year-old.
“At the end of last season, when he was injured, he would even get clips from some of my games to show me where I could be more dangerous and what I could do differently. He also showed me clips from other strikers in the Prem.
“I remember he showed me a goal from Diogo Jota, a header inside the box. He scores so many headers, it’s ridiculous. Pat just told me, ‘If you stay between the sticks, you’re going to score goals.”
Jota stacking up against the best
Jota really is an incredible header of the ball. Because of his height, this is a surprising attribute. But his record would actually be impressive even if he were a 6-foot 7 battering ram.
Harry Kane isn’t a 6-foot 7 battering ram by any stretch of the imagination. But he is the most consistent No.9 in the last decade of the Premier League. He’s also second on the list of all-time headed Premier League goals as per premierleague.com. Comparing his headed record against Jota’s is interesting.
Obviously, Kane has a much higher sample size. He’s scored 189 Premier League goals to date, Jota has 40.
But they actually have an almost identical percentage of goals scored from headers. 34 of the England captain’s goals have been with his head, which amounts to a smidgen under 18 per cent.
For Jota, seven of his 40 have come via his noggin. This puts him just a touch behind Kane on 17.5 per cent. Fascinating.
Sitting top of the all-time Premier League chart is Peter Crouch. With 40 of his 108 goals scored with his head, the former Liverpool striker blows both Jota and Kane out of the water with a whopping 37 per cent.
Battering ram he may not have been, but Crouchy certainly was – is – 6-foot 7. For Jota to reach that kind of record would be a miracle.
Instead of his height, the Portugal international relies on his knack of sniffing out space in the box. Without him in the side, Liverpool have looked a little less dangerous. Now that he’s back, expect him to add a few more headers to his highlights reel in the near future.
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