Bethany England Shows She Has Overtaken Vivianne Miedema as Top WSL Striker

​As the first domestic silverware of the 2019/20 women’s season was handed out at the Continental Cup over the weekend, one of the central themes of the final, and one that is increasingly coming to define this campaign as a whole, was the battle for supremacy between two prolific strikers in Arsenal’s Vivianne Miedema and Chelsea’s Bethany England.

The pair have scored 47 goals between them in all competitions so far in 2019/20, but it was England’s brace that decided the contest, securing the trophy for Chelsea and maintaining their recent dominance over the Gunners. Miedema, meanwhile, couldn’t find a breakthrough.

Despite Miedema obviously being world class, there is reason enough to debate whether it is now England instead who has overtaken her as the leading forward in English football.

Miedema only turned 23 last summer and is already her country’s all-time top scorer on 69 international goals. She is also the reigning PFA Players’ Player of the Year and set a new WSL record for goals in a single season in 2018/19 when she netted 22 times in 20 games.

The Dutch superstar famously cares little for individual accolades, but it is certainly worth noting that she finished fifth in the 2019 Ballon d’Or rankings, was also fifth in the FIFA equivalent, and placed sixth in The Guardian’s 2019 list of the top 100 female footballers in the world.

Miedema has been equally impressive this season, with 27 goals in all competitions to her name so far, already only four shy of matching last season’s final tally of 31. That included a double hat-trick in a record-breaking WSL Arsenal win over Bristol City in December.

Yet despite looking set to utterly smash all records beyond comprehension at that point, the Arsenal spearhead has been far less productive by her own ridiculous standards in the last couple of months. Two goals in the recent 3-2 WSL win over Liverpool were actually her first for Arsenal in two months after going four WSL games without a goal in the new calendar year.

That double hat-trick against Bristol, plus four assists in the same game – half Miedema’s WSL assist tally for the season, as mind-blowing as it was, has also served to skew her stats in one sense.

England has scored precisely the same number of WSL goals this season (14). But where Miedema has scored in eight different league games, the England forward has netted in 10. That includes eight WSL outings in a row since November, unplayable form at a crucial time.

In Saturday’s Conti Cup final in Nottingham, where a record crowd gathered at the City Ground, England broke the deadlock for Chelsea early with a close-range finish that showed a clinical poacher’s edge in contrast with her spectacular goals that have grabbed headlines.

The previous weekend’s 30-yard stunner in a 3-3 draw with Manchester City is quite possibly the best goal the WSL has ever seen, only marginally better than the one she scored at Stamford Bridge against Tottenham on the very biggest stage on the opening weekend of the season.

And yet in the dying moments in the cup final, after Arsenal had equalised through Leah Williamson, she showed for a second time that game there is more about her than the spectacular by converting a back-post tap-in to win it for Chelsea right at the death.

Miedema drew a blank at the other end, seeing two second-half chances go wide of the far post and forcing two noteworthy saves out of Chelsea goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger in either half.

England is playing in a better side right now, which is obviously a massive boost for her individual performances. She is also flying on confidence, which is any footballer’s greatest weapon. If Chelsea go on to wrestle the WSL title back from Arsenal this season, now to be expected, England is likely to scoop both the PFA and FWA player of the year prizes – she may well do even if they don’t.

She is even now on course to pass Miedema as top scorer for the campaign, and it all serves to underline her new-found status as the premier forward in the WSL right now.

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