“I think just at the moment we’re just missing his real fire. But players will do that, they’ll go through periods of different bits of form during the season. I’ve said to him to keep going, his goals will come.

“People who are centre-forwards will tell you they lose confidence when they don't score goals and regain it when they do.”

Neville Southall knows what it takes to make a great striker having frustrated a succession of them during his illustrious career between the sticks for Everton.

And he believes Jelavic has the tools to become the first Everton player to smash through the coveted 20-league-goals-a-season barrier since Lineker.

“Everton lacked goals but they have addressed that with Jelavic,” says Southall. “It’s been a while since someone scored 20 goals in a season – but he could be the man to do that.

“He’s a striker where you can defend well all game and then he’ll score a goal. He reminds me a lot of Ian Rush. He only needs one chance and he will score.

“He scored on his debut and he looked like an instinctive finisher from the start.”

Everton have a rich history of prolific strikers, with no team having had more leading goalscorers than the 12 they have totalled – Jack Southworth, Jimmy Settle, Alex Young, Bert Freeman, Bobby Parker, Wilf Chadwick, Dixie Dean (twice), Tommy Lawton (twice), Bob Latchford and Lineker, all of which were won outright.

By contrast, Liverpool, despite their greater success in the top flight, have had only six leading goalscorers – Sam Raybould, Jack Parkinson, Ian Rush, Aldridge and the two golden boots shared by Owen.

Aldridge, however, believes that could change this season.

“I would be delighted to see Luis Suarez get himself in a position near the end of the season where he is in with a shot of claiming the golden boot,” says the former Liverpool and Tranmere Rovers striker, who is the sixth-highest all-time leading scorer in English league football.

“There is no doubt that one of the reasons Liverpool haven’t won the league for such a long time is because we not had players consistently at the top of the scoring charts.

“Most sides who have the top scorer go on to win the league and though I can’t see Liverpool winning the league this season, I would love it if Luis could push on and be the league’s top scorer.

“It is a fantastic feeling to win it and shows, that as a goalscorer, you are doing your job.”

That, as Aldridge intimates, a title-winning club should possess the leading goalscorer seems a fair assumption, but it has only become something of a recent phenomenon.

During the Premier League era, eight of the 20 title winners have possessed the top-flight’s top scorer, with six coming in the past decade.

However, in the post-war Football League era between 1946 and 1993, only seven of the championship winners also had the top scorer, with only two of those – Ipswich’s Ray Crawford in 1962 and Arsenal’s Ronnie Rooke in 1948 – coming before 1981.

The tendency for squad rotation, particularly at the leading clubs, means goals are these days more likely to be shared around, as shown by Manchester City trio Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli all figuring in last season’s top 10 scorers.

But what hasn’t changed is that goals win games. And in Suarez and Jelavic, Merseyside possess two of the Premier League’s most devastating proponents of the striker’s art.