Thursday 30 September 2010

BRADLEY ON VERGE ON CREATING HIS OWN HISTORY

With a former Arsenal legend as his dad and a current England international for a brother, Bradley Wright-Phillips has had a lot of live up to in his career.

Bradley arrived at Home Park looking to make a fresh start after a spell at Southampton, but a number of injury problems prevented him from getting a regular run in the side under Paul Sturrock and he only appeared as a substitute under Luggy.

It was not until Paul Mariner had assumed control of first team affairs that Bradley was given his first start in a 1-1 draw with Coventry City in March 2010. In his next start, in a Westcountry derby clash with Bristol City, he was on target as the Pilgrims won 3-2.

Bradley then went on to strike up a useful partnership with Jamie Mackie, who has recently been called into the Scotland squad, prior to Argyle's relegation to League One.

However, having scoring his fourth goal in as many games for the Pilgrims, following his brace against Swindon Town, he has given himself the chance of doing something that no Pilgrims striker has done since Tommy Tynan, which is to score 20 or more goals in a season.

Tynan hit 24 goals for Argyle in the 1988-89 season and only midfielder Steve Castle, who found the back of the net 21 times during the 1993-94 campaign under Peter Shilton, has been able to hit more than 20 goals for the Pilgrims since then.

A number of strikers have managed to hit double figures for Argyle following Tynan's 1988-89 haul including Robbie Turner, Dwight Marshall, Kevin Nugent, Adrian Littlejohn, Mickey Evans, Carlo Corazzin, Paul McGregor and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake. However, the player with the best goal return in the aforementioned list is Littlejohn who found the back of the net 17 times in Neil Warnock's Play-Off winning side in the 1995-96 campaign.

In the modern area, prior to Tynan, who also scored 31 goals in the 1984-85 season, Argyle's only other 20 goal-a-season men in the modern era have been Dave Kemp who scored 24 times in the 1980-81 campaign, Fred Binney, who hit 26 in the 1978-79 season, and Billy Rafferty who struck 23 times in the 1974-75 campaign.