For me Matt le Tissier takes the cake, managing to score 25 goals from midfield in the 1993/94 season for a Southampton team that finished 18th. Other strong contenders:
- Luis Suarez 13/14, honestly maybe the best individual season a player’s ever had in the league. 31 goals and 11 assists in 33 games in a Liverpool team that was largely Europa League level aside from Gerrard and Sturridge.
- Kevin Phillips 99/00, scoring 30 goals and winning the European Golden Shoe for newly promoted Sunderland.
Who’ve you got?
Bit of a leftfield one, maybe, but my team Sheffield Wednesday were pretty much singlehandedly kept in the Prem a couple of years longer than they had any right to be by Des Walker.
Post the Di Canio/Carbone era, we were truly abysmal and had barely any prem quality players in the squad. I had a season ticket at the time, and the number of points Des singlehandedly saved us was easily in excess of the amount of points we finished above relegation.
Finally, in 2001, his age caught up with him, and we were deservedly relegated. The rest is history, as they say.