Why Premier League Clubs Pay Premium Prices for Wingers With Little Goal Output

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  Ryan O’HanlonSep 8, 2026, 03:57 AM ET

  • Ryan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, followed by Arjen Robben, Gareth Bale, Neymar and Mohamed Salah, changed the accepted definition of a winger.

The traditional blueprint was straightforward: stay wide, receive the ball, beat the fullback and send a cross toward the center forward. Repeat it endlessly.

Even elite deliverers struggle with that final step. Depending on the sample and period, only about 1% to 3% of crosses become goals.

That made many winger-led performances maddening. A player could dominate his counterpart, carry the ball past multiple defenders and still finish with a hopeful ball into a crowded box. What if the players around him could finish as reliably as he could? The advantage largely vanished once the ball left his foot.

Ronaldo and Messi showed that the same pace and close control could be used more directly. With a typical shot conversion rate of roughly 10%, replacing a cross with a shot can raise the probability of scoring by somewhere between 233% and 900%, depending on the baseline used.

The return of wingers who don’t score

The current condition of the position is illustrated by Manchester City’s signing of Iliman Ndiaye.

The 26-year-old, who was born in France and represents Senegal, is among the Premier League’s most dangerous dribblers. His new teammate Jérémy Doku operates in a similar realm, but Ndiaye completed 72 take-ons last season, second only to Doku, according to Futi. He was nearly as productive the previous year, with 75 successful take-ons, fourth overall behind Doku, Mohammed Kudus and Salah.

The highlight reel NBC Sports published after the move makes Ndiaye look like a generational talent. He combines explosive speed, deceptive footwork, forceful finishing and a constant ability to turn carries into goals.

There is a catch. The 17-minute compilation contains nearly every Premier League goal Ndiaye scored over the previous two seasons. Without penalties, he netted 11 times for Everton during that span. Including three assists, that equals 0.25 non-penalty goal contributions per 90 minutes for the Toffees.

Only 96 players who met the Premier League’s qualifying criteria posted stronger per-minute attacking numbers last season. City nevertheless paid €70 million for Ndiaye.

Ndiaye is far from the only costly winger whose dribbling creates memorable clips without consistently producing goals.

Using Transfermarkt’s winger classification, Premier League clubs have paid at least €40 million in transfer fees for 23 players over the past three seasons. The deals, ranked by fee, are below.

Premier League winger transfers from the past three seasons

Conversion rates for shots and passes are noisy, so expected goals and expected assists provide a clearer measure of a player’s output near goal. xG+xA accounts for the quality and quantity of every shot and through ball rather than treating all attempts and assists alike.

For a winger, roughly 0.5 non-penalty xG+xA per 90 minutes is a reasonable benchmark for above-average production. If a Premier League side sees that level, it deserves closer scrutiny.

After removing four players who transferred from outside Europe’s five biggest leagues, 19 remain. Just five reached the 0.5 benchmark in the season immediately before their move: Barcola, Ouattara, Madueke, Mbaye and Johnson.

That comparison still may be generous. Johnson is listed as a winger but functions more like a wide centre-forward, primarily attacking the back post; he is the only player on the list to record fewer than one take-on per 90 minutes. Mbaye, meanwhile, accumulated only about 900 minutes, mostly as a substitute, for the world’s best club.

Among the genuine wide players who received regular minutes, only three of the 19 combined defensive isolation with above-average attacking output. Nor is it obvious that that output determined the price. Barcola’s 0.8 xG+xA was the highest on the list, yet Madueke’s fee ranked 10th and Ouattara’s 17th.

The disconnect is even clearer among the seven players who cost more than €60 million: four—Sávio, Ndiaye, Kudus and Elanga—fell below 0.4 xG+xA. Last season, 53 Premier League players with at least 900 minutes reached 0.4.

Why Premier League Clubs Have Pushed Winger Goals to the Back Burner

This pattern has persisted long enough to look structural rather than accidental. Across the past three transfer cycles, several clubs have spent heavily on wide players whose defining appeal is highlight-reel ball-carrying, even when their direct goal output is modest.

That represents a shift from a period when the leading clubs appeared to understand the value of a complete winger. In the Klopp and Guardiola title era, Liverpool and Manchester City fielded wide players who generated chances, scored goals and helped secure matches. Their squads suggested that dribbling mattered most when linked to an attacking outcome.

Three developments seem to be driving the change.

First is a tactical preference for control and risk management. At the top of the table, most clubs have adopted patterns that prioritize possession and reduce exposure. Arsenal’s growing collection of converted centre-backs, and Enzo Maresca’s decision to start Marc Guéhi at central midfield in each of his first two matches at Manchester City, illustrate the trend. Rather than attack quickly and accept the possibility of a turnover within a structure like the one shown below …

… leading sides have kept more players behind the ball as they advance it, while moving forward more deliberately. That reduces the number of attackers available to unsettle the opposition’s defensive shape and gives the defense more time to recover.

The answer has become to send the ball into wide areas and ask a dribbling winger to break the defense down individually. Only 17 players completed at least 1.75 take-ons per 90 minutes in the Premier League last season. Fourteen of the 19 players in this analysis reached that mark in the season before their move.

If the winger loses the ball, the team can limit the damage because its deeper players are already positioned for cover. A turnover near the touchline is also easier to manage than one in the middle of the pitch. The full sequence shown in the screenshot makes that logic clear:

That tactical choice is tied to a second development: an increasing obsession with measurable physical traits. As I reported earlier this year about Tottenham, football clubs now track off-the-ball running, the types of runs players make, maximum speed, acceleration and deceleration, and other indicators.

Sources across Europe have told me that these measurements have gained real influence in front offices. Clubs have been quicker to act on them than on analytical models intended to connect player activity with goals scored and prevented.

Yet these numbers describe what a player does, not whether what he does is effective. They do not establish whether his movement or dribbling creates or prevents goals. They also overlap with the traits that make a dribbler attractive—pace, acceleration and agility—so the same preference can reinforce itself.

The final factor is the enduring appeal of potential. Scouts and coaches naturally imagine what a player could become after receiving better coaching, a more suitable system or more time to develop.

The stylish dribbler is soccer’s equivalent of a wide receiver who runs a 4.3 40-yard dash or a 7-foot center who moves like a 6-foot-4 player. It does not matter if he currently scores little, fails to connect with passes or cannot shoot straight. What matters is the imagined future version—the one who may eventually deliver those missing skills.

Despite the Premier League’s modernization, more hierarchical decision structures and widespread use of data, clubs remain vulnerable to that temptation. Messi and Ronaldo proved that the two greatest soccer players of the 21st century could also be prolific wide scorers, yet a winger who repeatedly beats his defender can still command a large fee from his current club’s rival. Whether the transfer is actually the right move often comes second to the possibility of what he might become.

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