The issues raised by the debate about the relative value of Beckham and Owen has direct application to the astounding career of Don Bradman.

There are four obvious possible ways of explaining the huge statistical gulf between Bradman's average and his nearest rivals and all have been invoked by those who would minimize his achievements.

(1) Introduce some sort of quality differential, e.g. the elegance of strokeplay (a favourite of advocates of Frank Wooley).
(2) Focus on a subset of innings to make that argument that on "bad wickets" he was no better than other great batsman.
(3) Reinterpret the numerator - i.e. runs scored - to dismiss many of Bradman's runs as "piling it on" or "scoring for scoring's sake", in a way that other greats did not e.g. Hobbs, who was said to give up his wicket to allow another batsman a chance on good wicket.
(4) Deflate the numerator by reference to the alleged (poor) quality of opposition bowling and/or the (high) quality of his team-mates, again, relative to other greats.

To these standard arguments I would add another, in which, I am particularly interested.

(5) Boost the rating of great all-rounders.

The latter involves inventing some sort of measure that equates the value of runs scored and wickets taken.

These all have their counterparts in other sports comparisons. In the case of football, the greatest difficulty, analogous to bowling vs batting, concerns scoring vs defence. This is dramatized by the relative greatness of goalkeepers vs all outplayers. That issue may be insoluble; it's probably just as well to only compare goalies against goalies and this is likely true for pure defenders, too.

Midfielders are a far more intriguing case. Many great scorers were also great midfielders. Pele is the obvious example but Kocsis and Puskas were inside forwards, who, in the "W" formation of their era were cast as goal-makers rather than scorers. While one of the tactical innovations of that great Hungarian team of the early 50s was to play Hidegkuti as a "deep" centre forward, Puskas and Kocsis were more than pure "strikers", in modern terminology. Just as a current note, the comparison between Beckham and his fellow Red, Paul Scholes, is perhaps more revealing of the the "lifestyle" dimension of the Beckham phenomemon than the comparison with Owen. Scholes has scored 114 goals over 431 games for an average of 0.26; for England he has scored 13 in 54 games at a 0.27 average. Has Beckham set up that many more goals than Scholes? His he a better ball-winner?

On another note: the Beeb seems to have corrected its Shearer stats now - 30 goals it is. This is part of a continuing fall from grace; once a paragon of "objectivity" and accuracy, across the board "Auntie" looks more and more like an old hag. While it corrected the Shearer error, it has a list of highest English scorers on its page reporting on the Slovakia game (in which Owen scored both goals in a shaky England win) that is not quite accurate. First let me provide a good source: .
Greaves' and Lofthouse's appearances and (for Greaves) goals include matches subsequently derated by the FIFA as not First-class matches. This is a bit nitpicky but of more importance is their omission of Geoff Hurst, who scored 24 goals in 49 games; not merely the hat-trick hero of England's sole World Cup Final triumph but an all-round great centre forward.

Quick points on three entries on the Beeb's table. Lofthouse and Mortensen scored collectively 54 goals in 58 games. As they would agree, I'm sure (I'm not sure if Morty is still alive but Nat is an archetypal Lancashire man - as honest as you get) a huge percentage of those were courtesy of the genius of Stan Matthews. Also scoring 30 goals, but in 76 games, we have the most underrated great player, bar none - Tom Finney, who played largely as Matthews wing partner but was a great scorer, too.