Player Leeds sold for £5m has not scored a goal in 7 years and 3000 days

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Burnley’s Charlie Taylor is unlikely to come much closer than this to ending a goal drought which stretches all the way back to September 2015. 

During Saturday’s 0-0 draw away at Championship strugglers Reading, the Premier League-bound left-back set his sights from 25 yards out and sent a fierce shot whistling past the post.

In an age where full-backs are more like auxiliary wingers than they are defenders – Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jeremie Frimpong and co producing numbers most attackers would be proud of – Taylor’s seven-year goal drought from left-back is more reminiscent of the Gary Neville, Tony Hibbert era. 

When the sight of a full-back finding the back of the net was one of those ‘I was there’ sort of moments.

In fact, Taylor has played nearly 200 games for Burnley without finding the net. The last time he the 29-year-old found himself on the scoresheet, he was still wearing the white of Leeds United back in 2015, scoring the winner in a 2-1 victory away at MK Dons while sharing a pitch with the likes of Luke Murphy, Marco Silvestri and Scott Wootton.

Burnley’s Charlie Taylor hasn’t scored since Leeds United days

Few would have imagined, given how expertly Taylor located the bottom corner from the edge of the penalty area, that his fierce finish against the Dons – coming just one week after Tom Hardy’s Legend premiered at the Cannes Film Festival – would still be his most recent competitive goal seven years in the future. 

“I think Charlie Taylor has been magnificent throughout the whole season,” then-Leeds boss Uwe Rosler said following a result which lifted the Whites up to tenth in the Championship table. 

“On the left Charlie, has played every single game and he’s doing that very impressively.

“He has a great future in front of him. He’s willing to learn and he’ll keep getting better and better.”

Taylor, a key part of the Burnley side who have cruised back to the big time under Vincent Kompany, has certainly carved out a highly-respectable career for himself in England’s top two tiers, leaving Leeds for Turf Moor for a fee of £5 million during the Massimo Cellino era. 

But, clearly, that stunning strike against MK Dons 2,768 days ago was more the exception than the rule.