What makes a wide attacker "great"?

Some thoughts after reflecting on Noni Madueke's Arsenal impact

I watched Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Manchester City in real-time just like most of you would have this past weekend. And I had a similar thought toward the end of the first half that it seems like most of you did, something along the lines of, “Boy, Noni is cooking again!”

And then we got to the half, and Noni was unexpectedly pulled. The rest of the game happened, and afterwards I went back and started reviewing things as I do. And the more I re-examined, I started noticing some things about Noni’s performance I hadn’t before.

First there was this:

This is goal probability added. You can see here that Noni is below Merino, the non-attacking, defensive midfielder who cannot pass. Look at Saka, who played the same amount of time. What’s more:

Noni had the second-most negative GPA value in the match, behind only Calafiori, who played the full 90. Much of that came via negative passing. Saka, again, wow. And most of Noni’s positive addition came via, no surprise, the green bar, which is carrying. That’s because he receives and brings it into the box, playing a cutback or winning a corner most of the time.

For all the incisive carrying, though, Noni didn’t register a single completed pass into the box. He didn’t make a key pass. He created the most negative value via the pass in the side by far, again only playing half the match.

This got me thinking a bit more, so I pulled up the Athletic Club numbers again. Some very similar themes emerge here:

Someone watching either of these games likely would have told you Noni was the one finding all the joy down the right, but what was coming of it? For all the value being created via the carry or the dribble (the green), he was equally giving a lot of that goal probability back via misplayed or poorly measured passes that didn’t find their mark (the blue), with some exceptions.

And honestly, this would not be a new thing for Noni. Coming into this season, Noni ranked third in my ADAM formula for on-ball-value creating via ball-carrying among all wide forwards, behind only Jeremy Doku and Bryan Zaragoza. But his passing grade was more comparable to someone like Leon Bailey, slightly below average in the Premier League. His full career at Chelsea and PSV follows a similar pattern.

Of course, this made me think a bit more about my own recent/ongoing ADAM project as well. I wrote in part one of the Winger piece that the formula liked dribblers a little too much, which led to Allan Saint-Maximin and Adama Traore in particular seemingly always being too high up the list. Nobody in their right mind would consider them as high as the numbers were putting them at times.

Which leads me to what is, I suppose, the point of all this: The value added via those carries into the box, or dribbles, or however he gets there, loses some of its sting without something on the end of them. We’ve all made the jokes about Adama having no end product, but there’s a truth to them as well.

I don’t think Noni is in particular danger of becoming an Adama, after all he’s just 23 years old. But I think the City match does in a way become something of a microcosm for understanding the difference between a good winger and a great one: Bukayo Saka created eight times the goal probability that Madueke did. And while he may not have the razzle-dazzle ballcarrying frequency gene that Madueke does, I think the presence of that large blue bar on his graph is illustrative of his value as a creator. Some of that will have been due to the gamestate, and City’s decision to sit back, but some of that situational stuff will have made it even harder for Saka to create.

I’ve written and spoken on aesthetics bias a lot before — undercutting shouts for guys like Kolo Muani or Kudus — and while I don’t think this is exactly that, it’s a kind of twisted version of it. Noni bombing into the box is absolutely a good thing, but both he and Arsenal are going to need to find a way to get more from it.

As things stand, Noni’s 11 carries into the penalty area are tied for third in the Premier League. But Noni has 1.1 npxG+xAG so far in league play, which puts him tied for 51st. For comparison, the other two guys tied for third — Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah — are tied for 14th and tied with Noni, respectively, and most would consider Salah’s start to this season an underwhelming one.