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As a football fan, there is nothing more enjoyable than watching one of your players take on another and beat them. It makes you stand up and keep your eyes open for what’s possible. Instead, when you see your players being sent to their deaths, your heart races and your mind races thinking about all the bad things that might happen next.
We will therefore delve into this figure using unique PFF Premier League data for the 2022/23 season.
As a note in our system, a dribble is any time an offensive player initiates a motion past a defender.
When you think of the most flashy footballers in the Premier League, your mind immediately turns to the likes of Wilfried Zaha, Alan Saint-Maximin and Adama Traore. But which players try the most?
rank | player | team | dribble |
1 | Wilfried Zaha | crystal palace | 112 |
2 | Marcus Rashford | Manchester United | 97 |
3 | bukayo saka | arsenal | 97 |
4 | michael ollis | crystal palace | 93 |
5 | Ben Rama says | west ham | 88 |
6 | Gabriel Martinelli | arsenal | 81 |
7 | Leon Bailey | aston villa | 79 |
8 | Morgan Gibbs-White | nottingham forest | 77 |
9 | Harvey Barnes | Leicester City | 76 |
10 | Solymarch | Brighton and Hove Albion | 74 |
So it’s no surprise to see Zaha leading the way, even though we missed some familiar names. It comes down to opportunities as much as anything, and to identify opportunities, there are two ways you can really use metrics to advance your narrative. The first is looking at how long a player is on the court, so you end up with the number of dribbles per 90 minutes shown below. To make sure sample size doesn’t play too much of a role, we only looked at players who have played at least 500 minutes this year.
player | team | minute | dribble | per 90 drops |
Samuel Edozi | Southampton | 613 | 49 | 7.19 |
Kamardin Suleimana | Southampton | 564 | 45 | 7.18 |
Alan Saint-Maxime | newcastle united | 953 | 60 | 5.67 |
Alejandro Ganaccio | Manchester United | 503 | 31 | 5.55 |
Emmanuel Dennis | nottingham forest | 611 | 36 | 5.3 |
Ben Rama says | west ham | 1557 | 88 | 5.09 |
Adama Traore | wolves | 1257 | 70 | 5.01 |
Mito Kaoru | Brighton and Hove Albion | 1375 | 71 | 4.65 |
Wilfried Zaha | crystal palace | 2186 | 112 | 4.61 |
dangovatara | AFC Bournemouth | 657 | 32 | 4.38 |
Familiar names are back, along with a few names that may not be as familiar. The Saints duo of Samuel Edozie and Kamaldeen Sulemana will surprise some, and it will be interesting to see if they continue to take such risks and get more playing time.
But there is an argument that the on-field minutes could be misleading. If you’re playing on a team that doesn’t have a lot of balls, or may often defend leads, you may not get the same level of opportunity to attack defenders. In this case it’s better to look at the number of dribbles per possession, we set the limit here to at least 400 possessions to determine the top 10.
player |
team | property | dribble |
Dribble in every position. |
Alan Saint-Maxime | newcastle united | 454 | 60 | 13.22% |
Wilfried Zaha | crystal palace | 904 | 112 | 12.39% |
Adama Traore | wolves | 575 | 70 | 12.17% |
Leon Bailey | aston villa | 660 | 79 | 11.97% |
brennan johnson | nottingham forest | 603 | 71 | 11.77% |
Ben Rama says | west ham | 751 | 88 | 11.72% |
Marcus Rashford | Manchester United | 835 | 97 | 11.62% |
Mito Kaoru | Brighton and Hove Albion | 745 | 71 | 9.53% |
Wilfried Gunto | leeds united | 568 | 54 | 9.51% |
Harvey Barnes | Leicester City | 852 | 76 | 8.92% |
Here we see the names we (or at least I) most likely want to see. By that metric, no one wants to beat defenders more than the players on this list.
However, accepting a player and beating them are two very different things. The real key is not just confidence against defenders, but the ability to beat them. So the most interesting metric in this regard is dribble success rate.
player |
team | dribble | Dribble game. |
DRBCMP% |
Eberech Ezer | crystal palace | 59 | 38 | 0.64 |
william | Fulham | 40 | 25 | 0.62 |
Joao Cancelo | manchester city | 56 | 34 | 0.61 |
Kyle Walker-Peters | Southampton | 53 | 31 | 0.58 |
michael ollis | crystal palace | 93 | 53 | 0.57 |
james madison | Leicester City | 47 | 27 | 0.57 |
Adama Traore | wolves | 70 | 39 | 0.56 |
Demalegre | Everton | 69 | 38 | 0.55 |
Jack Grealish | manchester city | 64 | 35 | 0.55 |
Jordan Zemura | AFC Bournemouth | 44 | twenty four | 0.55 |
We’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on Zaha, but the stats suggest Palace have more than one player who fears attacking you. Eberechi Eze leads the way with Michael Olise in the top five as Palace have clearly recruited players who can beat you. That means it remains to be seen if they change managers, but it’s certainly something to keep an eye on.
Now for a brief introduction to the defender trying to stop all those dribbles. With 78 players facing at least 30 dribbles this year, the stats tell us veteran right back Seamus Coleman leads the way with 20 successful defenses on 32 successful dribbles.
player | team | drbdef | DrbdefW | DRBDEFW% |
Seamus Coleman | Everton | 32 | 20 | 62.50% |
anthony robinson | Fulham | 34 | twenty one | 61.76% |
Marty Cash | aston villa | 39 | twenty two | 56.41% |
emerson | tottenham hotspur football club | 37 | 20 | 54.05% |
ben white | arsenal | 52 | 28 | 53.85% |
Luke Shaw | Manchester United | 39 | 20 | 51.28% |
Diogo Dalot | Manchester United | 39 | 20 | 51.28% |
Kyle Walker-Peters | Southampton | 30 | 15 | 50.00% |
Pervis Estupinan | Brighton and Hove Albion | 34 | 17 | 50.00% |
Alexander Zinchenko | arsenal | 31 | 15 | 48.39% |
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