Late-blooming Stockley can move up the leagues - hopefully taking Exeter along with him

Harry Kane and Mohamed Salah may have lit up English football in 2018, but there is another name - less familiar to the general public - who tops the goalscoring charts across the English leagues.

Exeter City's Jayden Stockley has 22 goals so far in 2018, more than any other player in England in this calendar year. Across all of Europe's professional leagues in fact, only Cristiano Ronaldo (26) and Lionel Messi (25) have scored more.

Not bad company for a striker plying his trade in League Two.

The 25-year-old from Poole, a product of Bournemouth’s academy, has his feet firmly on the ground however: "I'm just doing my job really,” Stockley said in the wake of Exeter’s 2-0 win over Swindon Town that kept City second in the table. Stockley notched a third goal in his last two games in that match and is currently League Two’s top scorer with nine goals this season. He is currently a 4/1 favourite across sites like Bettingapps.co.uk to finish the season as the division's top scorer next May.

“I'm not even thinking about how many goals I can get, but the balls keep coming in and I get in the right places,” he added. "I'm not one to set targets, I just want to try my best."

"But it's all about promotions at the end of the day, it's all about the team and I know it's the same old cliché, but I'm so proud of the boys."

Exeter haven't tasted defeat in the league since a 1-0 reverse to MK Dons on August 25th and sit three points clear of the automatic promotion line on 27 points, with the Dons in 4th place on 24.

With only 13 matches played there's a long way to go of course, but The Grecians (with Stockley's help) have already given themselves a fantastic base on which to build a promotion challenge this year. Bookmakers currently have Exeter City a best priced 13/8 to achieve promotion by any means this season.

For Stockley himself, while he only has eyes on helping his team, at still just twenty-five there is plenty of time for his own career path to find its way up the divisions.

In recent years, the likes of Brighton's Glen Murray, Leicester's Jamie Vardy and even Kane - who before finding his feet at Tottenham had loan spells with Leyton Orient and Millwall - have proven that talented finishers can still make it to the highest level even if they had to cut their teeth in the lower leagues.

Stockley was unlucky not to get a break at Bournemouth as Eddie Howe’s men enjoyed a meteoric rise through the divisions to the Premier League. In total, Stockley had loan spells at eight clubs and a season in the SPL with Aberdeen before becoming finding his goalscoring boots at St James's Park.

"I've got aspirations to play higher and higher,” Stockley admits, "(but) that only works if you lay down good foundations and be reliable as a goalscorer.”

"You can't have one good season and expect everyone to want you, you've got to be someone who people will say 'Stockley will get you 20 goals a season' and here at Exeter, if I can keep doing it here, hopefully that'll result in a promotion."