This summer saw the signings of two goalscoring behemoths in Diego Costa and Falcao. Both scored goals for fun in La Liga and they are probably the two most natural finishers in the Premier League. The former has started brilliantly, while the latter has found it more difficult, but he is still recovering from a major injury and has had little game time this calender year. However, they will both be up there when it comes to the Golden Boot race. Diego Costa has always been a streaky scorer in the recent years, therefore its likely he’ll have a dry patch which could give other contenders time to catch up, especially a player like Falcao, who kept him out of the Atletico Madrid team for a while.
Diego Costa came into the Premier League with some pundits sceptical about whether he would cut it in the Premier League after a poor World Cup, but that was affected by injury. He has already found the back of the net nine times in the league, carrying his form from last season in which he scored 27 goals, and it was ten in his previous two seasons before that. He has become prolific since Falcao departed Atletico. His minutes per goal since Falcao left is a goal every 99.03 minutes. Meanwhile, his minutes per goal in the last four seasons is a goal every 124.41 minutes, which is still incredible, considering he was a fringe player for Atletico Madrid and on loan to Real Vallecano for two years of that.
Meanwhile Falcao has moved around a lot in his career, after dominating Portugal and Spain, he has now tried France and England. Injury affected his time at Monaco, but he has the perfect platform to take Manchester United back to the Champions League this season. He scored his first goal against Everton and many expect him to kick on now. In the same period as Costa, Falcao has scored an impressive goal every 119.13 minutes, which is just better than his Premier League rival. It will be interesting to see if he manages to score that frequently for Manchester United considering he is playing alongside two other clinical players in Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney.
The Chelsea player is coming into the season in better form after an exceptional season last year in Spain, he is also in contention for the Balon D’Or this year, which highlights how well he has done, but as every player does, he will eventually have a bad spell, he can’t continue to score at such a good rate. Falcao on the other hand, is playing in a side that will score lots of goals this season, and they’ll have to in order to make up for their poor defence. He is a more clinical player than either Rooney or Van Persie, therefore Louis van Gaal will rely on him to score the goals, especially after he settles in.
Diego Costa has a huge lead at the moment, but Falcao is the type of player that can score six goals in three games to narrow the gap. The lack of continental football for Manchester United is also an advantage as Falcao can be kept for the league games, while Costa may be rested domestically before big Champions League games and the risk for injuries is higher for Costa. Although many have already written off the Golden Boot race as Costa’s to lose, people could well be surprised when the Manchester United forward collects the prize in May, it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion.
