Liverpool icon explains how Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo changed the modern football

• Robbie Fowler explains that the two superstars have increased the expectations for strikers
• Now a top-class forward must score every game
• Former Liverpool player insists that said expectations are unfair because it is almost impossible to reach Messi and Ronaldo's level

"Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have a lot to answer for," Fowler writes for the Mirror. "They’ve changed the expectation on every striker at every level. Forever."

"When I was playing, if you could score more than a goal every two games, you were considered a top-class goalscorer. That was always the ratio people recognised as the benchmark. It was the same for all the great strikers. Rush, Law, Lineker, Shearer. A bit better than one in two, and you were the best.

"There were always the odd exceptions – players like Jimmy Greaves and Dixie Dean – but it was pretty much a hard and fast rule. That was, until Messi and Ronaldo ripped up the rule book! Now, if you don’t score every game, then people start asking questions."

"Serious questions. Which in my eyes, as a striker, is grossly unfair because those two are phenomenal, some would say unnatural, and you really shouldn’t be judging any striker by what they do."

Here's Messi and Ronaldo's comparison (via Total Sportek):

Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 450 goals in 438 matches for Real Madrid during his 9-year spell in the Spanish capital managing a sensational 1.03 goal-per-match ratio.