2000-2010 : The most prolific scorer was....

Looking over the past ten years, you'd be surprised to see who had the best games:goals ratio. Scoring in a whopping 46.34% of games he played for the Imps during the the decade, he was far more prolific than Jamie Forrester, Simon Yeo, Gary Taylor-Fletcher and Adrian Patulea, but who could it be?

In the interest of fairness, I decided to base this on players who have played more than 20 games for the Imps. 21 players officially classed as a striker passed that mark, so here is the rundown of the scorers for that position. Also, this is based on the assumption that Rene Howe, Chris Fagan or Jamie Clarke will fail to score about 15 goals each before the end of December.

Well number one, and it's someone who left Sincil Bank pretty early in the decade and despite scoring in nearly half of the games he played during the last ten years for City, he didn't once end the season as the leading goalscorer.

So who could it be? Is it Yeo? Is it Gary Taylor-Fletcher? Or did Ollie Ryan fool us all?

Nope, it was.....GAVIN GORDON

Having joined City from Hull City in 1997, Gordon was always someone who found the net easily and a brace in an away game at Cardiff in 2000 convinced the Bluebirds to take him to Ninian Park for a fee that was alledgely around the £550,000 mark. He left the Imps having scored 19 goals in 41 games for City during the year 2000.

However, he never quite replicated that form for anyone else though, that despite once scoring five goals in one match against Rushden and Diamonds in an LDV Vans Trophy game.

He went on to play for Notts County but again never replicated the form he had for City and he has spent many years plundering the non-League.

He was linked with a return to City during the mass-exodus of 2005. However, Keith Alexander distanced himself from a move for Gordon, that despite his goalscoring record at Lincoln.

Next up comes Jamie Forrester, the first non-surprise in the list. Scoring 37 goals in 101 games for the Imps over two spells. That included 3 hatricks in the space of 10 weeks. This equated to scoring in 36.63% of his games.

Despite missing quite a long period with a badly damaged leg, Lee Thorpe (left) the leading scorer for five seasons in a row from 1997-2002 (2001/2 shared with Steve Holmes) managed 34 goals in 101 games, averaging out as a goal in 33.66% of his games.

Tied for fourth are two strikers who both left and joined a club in League One. Gary Taylor-Fletcher managed 31 goals in 93 appearances, whereas Adrian Patulea also gained 11 goals in 33 appearances, both achieving an average of scoring in 33.33% of games.

Then comes a man who most people probably thought would be first. Simon Yeo's 51 in 157 appearances equates to 32.48%. Stallard is next with 29.57%, then comes Ben Wright (27.69%), Marvin Robinson (27.50%), Marcus Richardson (24.56%), Gary Birch (23.81%) and Louis Dodds (20.45%).

Despite being once called by Keith Alexander as one of the most exciting prospects in lower-league football, Francis Green scored just 20 goals in 116 appearances, equating to 17.24%, but that was still better than Tony Battersby with an even 100 appearances and 16 goals.

Cameron (15.07%), Adie Mike (15%) and Lenell John-Lewis (12.50%) all avoid the embarrasement of being in less than 10% figures. The same could not be said for Martin Gritton (9.38%), Dene Cropper (5.26%), Allan Pearce (4.76%) and Derek Asamoah (4.65%). However, none got anywhere near the only striker who played more than 20 games and didn't manage a single goal.

I'm sure you can easily figure it out before I even get onto the stats, but with 39 appearances and not a single goal to his name, the Wooden Spoon Award goes to Oliver Ryan. The striker missed many golden opportunities to score, including missing several open goals.

Were you surprised that Gavin Gordon was the most prolific? Or that Simon Yeo, despite scoring more goals than anyone else, only being 6th?