CENTRE-FORWARDS are the men who frequently rewrite the football record books.

But not usually more than a century after they last kicked a football.

Alex ‘Sandy’ Young, however, was not your average footballer.

The man who scored the winning goal in Everton’s first FA Cup triumph in 1906, the man who later served three years for the manslaughter of his brother – and the man who for decades sat below Dixie Dean and Graeme Sharp in Everton’s all-time list of leading league scorers, has been belatedly and dramatically moved up a place by a group of men who clearly do “know their history.”

The Everton Heritage Society was created several years ago. It’s an organisation of Everton enthusiasts with a self-appointed brief to become a reference point for all historical Everton enquiries.

And in Alex ‘Sandy’ Young they have come up with a corker.

Everton’s all-time top scorer is set in stone – and probably will be forever.

Bill ‘Dixie’ Dean scored 383 goals in his Goodison career, 349 of them in 399 league games.

Graeme Sharp sits proudly in second place on the all-time list with a 159 goal haul – again a figure unlikely to be challenged any time soon.

But Sharpy also thought he also held runners-up spot in the league goal charts with 111 – one more than Young.

Until today.

Heritage Society statisticians Billy Smith and Steve Johnson have spent years trawling, researching and studying newspaper archives – and believe they have unearthed an anomaly which has passed undetected for years. Steve Johnson is the man who created the Evertonresults.com website and is author of the ‘Everton – The Official Complete Record’.

Billy Smith is the author of the Blue Correspondence series and the man behind the bluecorrespondent.co.nr website which seeks to host every newspaper article of pretty much every Everton story ever published.

And they reckon that Sandy Young should have been credited with 113 league goals – but was given an FA Cup goal he didn’t score – making a grand total of 127.

Billy explained: “After years of research, I realised that Alex (Sandy) Young’s League total, did not add up.

“The Complete Record’ books by Ian Ross and Gordon Smailes give Alex Young’s League record as:

1901-02 30 apps 6 goals

1902-03 19 apps, 5 goals

1903-04 22 apps, 10 goals

1904-05 31 apps, 14 goals

1905-06 30 apps, 12 goals

1906-07 33 apps, 28 goals

1907-08 33 apps, 16 goals

1908-09 23 apps, 9 goals

1909-10 24 apps, 2 goals

1910-11 30 apps, 8 goals

Total 275 League apps. 110 league goals;

“But after going through my records, match by match, here are my records:”

1901-02 30 apps 6 goals

1902-03 19 apps, 5 goals

1903-04 22 apps, 12 goals *

1904-05 31 apps, 14 goals

1905-06 30 apps, 12 goals

1906-07 33 apps, 30 goals*

1907-08 33 apps, 16 goals

1908-09 23 apps, 9 goals

1909-10 24 apps, 2 goals

1910-11 30 apps, 8 goals

Total 275 League apps, 114 League Goals

“As you can see, my record has Alex on four more goals, giving a total of 114 goals in league football.”

“The games that matter were:

1. Sept 5, 1903, At Goodison Park, against Notts County, 3-1 the records have McDermott, Settle, and Sharp as scorers, however the newspapers have Young and not Sharp.

2. Sept 26, 1903, At Villa Park, 1-3 the records give Jimmy Settle the goal, however, the newspapers give it to Alex Young.

3. Oct 27, 1906, At Burnden Park, 3-1, records Bolton, Sharp, Young as the scorers; the Newspapers have Bolton, Young (2) as scorer.

4. December 8, 1906, At Goodison Park against Derby County 2-1, the records have Bolton and G. Wilson, the newspapers have G. Wilson and Young.

Football statistics – especially from the pre-First World War era, are a minefield.

To underline the difficulties, Society member Steve Johnson then pointed out that a game played at Goodison Park against Bristol City on Christmas Eve 1910 listed an Everton goalscorer as Young.

But while authors and statisticians subsequently assumed the scorer to be the prolific Sandy Young, it was actually a man called Robert Young, taking Young’s total from 114 back down to 113.

Then Billy plucked out an FA Cup goal scored against Liverpool in January 1902 long credited to Sandy Young, but which subsequently seems to have been scored by Jack Taylor.

Steve’s studies are continuing and further anomalies will be revealed when he updates his exhaustive reference work, The Official Complete Record.

The extra goals credited to Young mean that he actually scored 30 league goals in the 1906/07 season – as originally reported in a Liverpool Echo article of April 6, 1938 headlined: “TOMMY LAWTON ON WAY TO AN EVERTON RECORD.”

That total inexplicably became 28 in future reference books.

Steve added: “It’s not just possible goalscoring errors that I’ve been researching. I’ve also got some possible appearance errors and ‘positional’ errors too.

“My plan is to spend some time in the next few months at the British Library newspaper site in Colindale in North London seeing if I can confirm the data one way or another.

“One of the problems is that early newspaper reports are notoriously inconsistent and error-strewn (not like today’s papers, of course!).

“The main losers will be Edgar Chadwick, who will lose eight goals, Alex Latta (six) and B Stewart (four) – but other players will gain goals.

“There may have been two separate William Campbells who played for the club in the 1890s.

“Arthur Chadwick’s name was probably actually Albert Chadwick (an 1880s/90s player) and there are plenty more.

“As James Corbett (author of the Everton Encyclopaedia) said to me, you’ll never get to a final position on this sort of stuff – there’s always the inevitability that something else will be discovered that means accepted facts have to be amended.”

Perhaps the final word should lie with Graeme Sharp – undeniably the second highest goalscorer in Everton’s long history.

“Surely the figure which matters is the overall total,” he said.

“I scored 159 goals for Everton which is something I’m very proud of.

“As for the league total, if the lads from the Heritage Society go back through the Echo archives I’m sure they’ll find a few more goals I should have been given too!”