There are statistics for everything in football these days.
And with statistics go records.
So it’s easy to get blas when another one gets trotted out, and to diminish proper achievements that get mixed up with the meaningless one.
David Clarkson becoming the first Dundee player to score in his first seven games isn’t the sort of thing that nice pieces of cut glass are handed out for, but it is worthy of dwelling on.
It’s a stunning accomplishment for a guy who couldn’t find a club until September.
He was deemed a failure at as low a level as the English League Two, and was effectively unemployed in the summer.
Google his name and you’ll find an article entitled “The fall and fall of David Clarkson.”
A guy whose lack of match fitness was there for all to see when he played a trial game with St Johnstone in pre-season has been able to find the net in every single one of the matches he has played for Dundee.
They’ve been proper strikers’ goals, and of the many morals of the David Clarkson story, the fact that a square peg has at last been hammered into a square hole is possibly the most relevant one.
It has taken four years (at the peak of his career) for a manager to come up with the novel idea of playing the man in his favoured position and to focus on his strengths.
Asking a centre forward to score goals? It’ll never catch on.