Owen Hargreaves was up in arms over Liverpool attacker Roberto Firmino not being featured in a poll by BT Sport to determine the Premier League’s best current No.9.
The broadcaster asked fans to decide who was the best number 9 in the Premier League at the moment and gave the options of voting for Manchester City forward Sergio Aguero, Leicester City hitman Jamie Vardy and Arsenal attacker Pierre-Emmerick Aubameyang as well as the choice to vote other.
Man City’s Aguero ended up winning the poll, but when asked for his opinion on the results Hargreaves couldn’t understand why Firmino had been snubbed by not being an option, as he has a better all-round game than the league’s other No.9s.
“How is Roberto Firmino not in that list?” said Hargreaves on BT Sport’s Early Kick-Off (11:37am, Saturday, November 9th).
“It depends on who’s in, everyone is going to say goals, so Harry Kane and Aguero, but in terms of intensity, pressing from the front, he’s hard to look past as his overall game is probably better than everyone.
“But he doesn’t get the goals.”
OPINION
Hargreaves seemed agitated that Firmino wasn’t an option in the poll and that is a testament to the Brazilian’s talents. While Simon Jordan did get the ball rolling by questioning where the Liverpool players were, it was Hargreaves that argued a case for why Firmino was arguably the Premier League’s best No.9, with him highlighting his work ethic more than anything else. The pundit did acknowledge the 28-year-old’s lack of goals, and you have to feel that was the reason why BT Sports rudely snubbed him. Firmino has only mustered up three goals across all competitions this season, meaning he has only averaged a goal every 308 minutes (Source: BBC Sport). When you consider Aguero, who won the poll, has scored nine goals this season, resulting in him averaging a goal every 73 minutes, as per the BBC, then it’s easy to understand that BT’s poll is more effectively asking which No.9 is the best at grabbing their side goals. Yet clearly Firmino isn’t just all about scoring goals.
