Why Bukayo Saka’s assists record doesn’t tell the full story

Bukayo Saka’s ability to both score and create goals has been a staple of his game since he broke into the Arsenal first team six years ago.

In 280 club appearances, he has netted 76 goals and assisted 73. The 24-year-old registered 100 goal involvements in his 200th Premier League game in October, with 55 goals and 45 assists to his name at the time. With a near-symmetrical record for his output in the final third, there is a fair amount of expectation surrounding him each season.

This year, those expectations led to some misguided discussions around the England winger.

Saka entered the November international break in strong form, scoring three goals in four games for Arsenal, but attention was turning to his lack of assists for the season. His two assists in successive games last week, against Bayern Munich and Chelsea, may quieten those discussions.

But does nothing matter unless there is a goal at the end of an action? Not in Saka’s case.

At this point last season, Arsenal needed Saka’s performances to translate into numbers. They were already chasing Liverpool, and Saka was doing the heavy lifting. He became the fourth-fastest player to reach 10 Premier League assists by matchday 13 (November 30, 2024), and had five league goals to his name by that date, too.

10 – Bukayo Saka has 10 assists in Arsenal’s 13 Premier League games this term; only Cesc Fàbregas in 2014-15 (12), Mesut Özil in 2015-16 (12), & Harry Kane in 2020-21 (11) have reached 10 assists in fewer of a team’s games from the start of a season in the competition. Platter. pic.twitter.com/9c6T2hvLK6

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 30, 2024

Saka’s comparative drop in assists in 2025-26 has not come from him being less of a creative threat.

The workload has been more spread out this season. By matchday eight, the 1-0 win over Fulham, Arsenal had 10 different scorers in the Premier League. Now 13 games in, Mikel Arteta’s side are five points clear at the top of the league and have scored the second-highest number of goals (25) behind Manchester City’s 27.

We will get to the underlying stats later, but so much of what Saka brings to a performance comes down to presence, and the 1-1 draw to Chelsea was the latest example of that.

The second time he received the ball in the game, Marc Cucurella was kicking through the back of him. That is not a ploy adopted only by Cucurella, but one that is used by full-backs across the league when they can get close enough to Arsenal’s No 7. This has been the case for years now, but he continues to pick himself up, dust himself down and cause problems for full-backs.

That early foul earned Cucurella a booking, which afforded Saka space in their later encounters, such as for his clipped assist for Mikel Merino’s equaliser.

In other games this season, that ability to keep going has been key to driving the momentum into Arsenal’s favour. In that win away at Fulham, for instance, his feints, nutmegs and ability to receive with his back foot put Ryan Sessegnon into serious difficulty. Fulham’s striker Raul Jimenez even tracked back far enough to block one of Saka’s crosses in the game, but the winger still ended the evening as the standout player without a goal contribution, although his corner being flicked on by Gabriel for Leandro Trossard is what won the game.

The same could be said for Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Real Madrid in last season’s Champions League quarter-final first leg. Most will understandably remember this game for Declan Rice’s two unbelievable free kicks, but something had to happen to put the midfielder in a position to score them.

This was Saka’s first start after returning from his three-month hamstring injury, but as the Spanish press put it, he tormented Los Blancos.

Three minutes in, he dropped a shoulder to get by Luka Modric and win a foul on the edge of the box. The tone was set, and as the first half progressed, he also got the better of David Alaba and Jude Bellingham, who Alaba actively called back for help. He whipped the ball into the six-yard box on both occasions, but without a team-mate in position to tap in, the stats only show those actions as incomplete passes, disregarding the threat and feeling transmitted.

Having run Alaba ragged in the first half, Saka was in full control when he won Rice’s first free kick off him after the break, and he showed even more personality to burst past Bellingham, Rodrygo and Eduardo Camavinga for the second.

Alaba had a tough evening against Saka in the Champions League last season (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Again, neither action went down as an assist, but both were the result of a complete performance that should be just as memorable as Rice’s free kicks.

Saka’s first assists this season have also been somewhat overdue. Incredibly, the cross for Merino at Chelsea was his first Premier League assist for a year, but the wait should not have been that long.

He created decent-to-big chances for Viktor Gyokeres against West Ham and Fulham, Martin Odegaard against Olympiacos, William Saliba and Riccardo Calafiori against Sunderland and had an assist for Gabriel Martinelli against Atletico Madrid chalked off as the Brazilian was offside.

Statistically, Saka is ranked joint-fifth in the Premier League for expected assisted goals with an xAG of 2.7 (xAG specifically accounts for a pass that ends in a shot). He has also amassed 1.5 xAG in the Champions League, which takes his tally to 4.2 across both competitions, at least double the number of actual assists he has.

When viewed through expected assists only, which accounts for the likelihood that any pass will end as an assist, he ranks fourth in the Premier League with his total of 2.9 xA and second when that is put through a per 90 lens (0.31, with Jeremy Doku’s 0.38 the best return per 90).

Numbers are important, but when performances are consistently strong, they should serve more as evidence of that influence rather than being the determining factor.

Given that Saka is paid more attention than most other wingers in the Premier League, he often has to bring much more to his game. At times, that means he is the one setting the tone, turning the screw and generating Arsenal’s momentum.

All that work should not go unnoticed in matches when others grab the headlines. But now that Saka has assists on the board as well as goals, the time is ripe for him to be as decisive as he has been in previous years.