The fastest to 50

With Carlos Tevez netting his fiftieth goal for the club in the weekend victory over Notts County, there was a bit of chat on Twitter today as to whether Tevez was the fastest player to achieve this feat.

Unfortunately there are no official statistics (that I'm aware of - although if there is a job going....) that I've managed to lay my hands on - although the club have a nice post up on the official site looking at the greatest goalscorers overall.

So it has been a case of ploughing through some of the reference and history books that I have (particularly mention must go to this one by Gary James, which I have always found to be a superb reference point). 

A great starting point for me though (and I am thankful as it cut out a lot of initial research time) was this thread up on the Bluemoon forum which lists a host of players who have achieved the feat. I've concentrated on just the top five that were first to register fifty goals however, and there are one or two differences in the totals I've come to in comparison (although neither I suppose may be wholly accurate given the lack of official data).

Here is the top five that I arrived at:

Derek Kevan (1963-64) 64
Carlos Tevez (2009-) 73 
Peter Doherty (1935-38) 76
Sandy Turnbull (1902-05) 80
Dave Halliday (1930-34) 80  

What you will of course notice is that Tevez, although a great record, is a little way off Kevan's (who had a fantastic career record in total but was fairly unheralded) which will take some beating but in the modern day era his effort is unparalleled with Shaun Goater (just over 100 games and outside the top division) closest to him.

Interesting too that none of the top five (although Tevez may have many years ahead) made a dent on the all-time goalscorers list, and if I'm not mistaken none made it to 100.

If anyone come across any data that may contradict what I have arrived feel free to drop me a line.