Ben Burgess became a fan favourite at Griffin Park during the 2001/02 campaign, netting 18 goals in 51 appearances while on loan from Blackburn Rovers. In total, Ben led the line for ten clubs during a 14-year career.

Now a teacher in Lancashire, Ben still keeps a close eye on the Bees and will be providing his thoughts ahead of each game this season.

Weight for it

Every footballer appears to enjoy sharing photos of themselves shirtless, sweating and in the gym.

This hasn’t always been the case. The role of sports science has taken football to the next level; players are fitter, stronger, leaner and quicker - all things I could have done with! Even my 13-year-old daughter does gym sessions twice a week with Manchester United.

As an apprentice at Blackburn Rovers, our youth team coach would do gym work with us, but the older and more cynical first team players would walk past the gym and shout things like: “There are no weights on the pitch” or “No use lifting weights if you can’t control a ball.”

It always seemed from what those players said, that it was a choice between gym work or being a good footballer.

I should have used my own brain back then, but I was influenced by others and never really believed gym work would help. You only need to look at Cristiano Ronaldo to realise how wrong I was.

You just need to follow a club's social media account or watch one of the many behind-the-scenes documentaries to see how gyms are a central feature at training grounds, used on a daily basis before and after training.

Scotland international Christian Dailly signed for Rovers when I was 18 and I remember everyone watching him like he was some sort of exotic animal in the zoo. What was he doing you ask? He spent 30 minutes stretching before and after training and we just couldn’t get our heads around it!

Big time

Sergio Agüero or Erling Haaland? Michael Owen or Harry Kane? Lionel Messi or Zlatan Ibrahimovic?

Some of you eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that each choice was, in essence, small forward or big forward?

All six players have tremendous goalscoring records but are at the complete opposite ends of the vertical spectrum.

There was a time not long ago that teams were focusing on a small nippy striker who could threaten in behind defences. Now, though, the striker trend has gone full circle in the Premier League. No longer is it just Sam Allardyce or Sean Dyche who like a ‘big man’; even the football purists like Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp have super-sized their attack.

As I write this column, the three top scorers in the Premier League are all in excess of six feet: Erling Haaland, Harry Kane and Ivan Toney.

Haaland has recalibrated people's expectations of what a striker can do in the Premier League. When I watch him, I see an absolute single-mindedness to score goals. He doesn’t overplay and he doesn’t showboat, but what he does do is score goals.

Footballers are becoming better athletes every year and when you have a big striker who can also run at lightning speed, then you have the ingredients for a world beater.

A big striker will always hold up the ball well and can bring others into play like Harry Kane does at Tottenham, whereas a smaller striker can get knocked off the ball and usually relies on stretching defences by running in behind (à la Michael Owen).

My ‘big striker’ idols when I was growing up were Duncan Ferguson and Niall Quinn. They both had great careers, however you would not describe either as prolific.

Maybe it’s the big strikers who have evolved and forced managers to make them the de facto choice for those all-important forward positions. It’s just a shame I was slightly behind in the evolutionary progression!