Goalscorers, the Liga BBVA's scriptwriters

With the season now over, the time has come to rate the division’s forward men. Goals have allowed teams to secure safety, qualify for Europe and, in the case of FC Barcelona, be crowned league champions. As such, one of the aspects worth studying is who the top marksmen have been for each team.

In terms of going forward Barcelona broke all the records last season. Proof of this lays in the fact that the Catalans’ top three scorers, their three strikers, are among the Liga BBVA’s top ten finishers. The trio of Messi, with 43 goals, Neymar, with 22, and Luis Suárez, with 16, made a huge contribution to securing the title for los blaugranas.

Only a few sides had their top three scorers compiled of three front men. SD Eibar (Mikel Arrubarrena, Federico Piovaccari and Manu del Moral), RCD Espanyol (Sergio García, Christian Stuani and Felipe Caicedo), Levante UD (David Barral, Víctor Casadesús and Kalu Uche) and Villarreal CF (Luciano Vietto, Gerard Moreno and Ikechukwu Uche) were those other teams.

Not only strikers know how to find the target

Other clubs have turned to players in other positions, albeit in attacking roles, to help out in the goalscoring department. By playing out wide or behind the frontline, RC Celta’s Manuel Agudo 'Nolito', RC Deportivo’s Lucas Pérez and Valencia CF’s Dani Parejo acted as their teams’ main goal machines this season. 

There were also players in more defensive roles who chipped in heavily in the scoring stakes for their teams and closed out the campaign among their clubs’ lists of best finishers. The standouts in this regard were: Mikel San José and David Lombán, of Athletic Club and Elche CF fame respectively. Both men ended the season as their team’s second highest scorers, with five goals apiece, and were only pipped to the post by two team-mates who just so happened to record their greatest league campaigns in front of goal: Aritz Aduriz (18) and Jonathas de Jesús (14).

Other names have smashed records with their teams. Such are the cases of Alberto Bueno and David Barral. The Madrid-born forward became Rayo Vallecano’s all-time top scorer in a single Liga BBVA season by notching up 17 goals this year. Elsewhere, the Cádiz native pulled off a similar feat with Levante UD by closing out the season with a tally of 11.

New kids on the block

It’s often said that players need time to acclimatise to a new club, but a few of this season’s newer signings managed to dispel that myth. That was certainly the case at Atlético Madrid, where the club’s main scorers, Antoine Griezmann (22) and Mario Mandžukić (12), both joined the Vicente Calderón outfit last summer.

Deportivo’s Lucas Pérez, having signed recently, was the club’s main marksman of the campaign and Oriol Riera, who only required five months to climb the Galician team’s scoring chart, followed closely behind him. A final mention has to go to James Rodríguez who, with 13 goals, closed out his account as Real Madrid’s third top scorer, beaten only by the Liga BBVA’s top talisman, Cristiano Ronaldo (48) and Karim Benzema (15).