As a striker, I couldn’t care less how I scored as long as the ball went into the goal.
That said, when you hit a perfect strike into the top corner from 25 yards, it feels more valuable than a lucky bounce off your backside. The reaction from your team-mates, the bench and the crowd sparks a different feeling in the stadium.
My bread and butter was popping up in the right areas closer to goal but I was never afraid of having a shot from distance, no matter how far out. I scored 33 Premier League goals from outside the box, which is still joint-third on the all-time list.
The consensus is that long-range shooting is a dying art but we have seen a surge of players scoring from far out. There have already been 18 goals from outside the penalty area, the joint-highest in the past 17 years after four Premier League games.
That could be an early-season quirk, but we saw something similar during the European Championship this summer — one-quarter of the goals scored in the group stage came from outside the box.
In the age of expected goals, these tallies fly in the face of what we expect in modern-day football, given that the average shot is edging ever closer to goal.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you are more likely to score as you get closer to the goal, but as the old saying goes, “If you don’t buy a ticket, you’re never going to win the lottery.”
As The Athletic’s Michael Cox outlined last week, the use of the expected goals stat might mean that players think more about where they are shooting from, but data isn’t the sole reason a player might pass rather than pull the trigger. The overall evolution of tactics has seen shot distances steadily reduce for decades.
Most teams are far more possession-based and it makes sense that they don’t want to give the ball away cheaply. Instead, they play that extra pass and work it into a better area before shooting.
The question is: if the data suggests shooting from closer to the goal is better, does it ever make sense for players to have a pop from distance?
Let’s look at what the numbers say and also unpick a couple of those screamers from last weekend’s games.
Discussing this topic with The Athletic’s Mark Carey showed that the overall number of long-range goals scored have not exactly plummeted in recent years.
The raw figures were higher in the 2010s — the highest being 191 goals scored from outside the box in 2007-08. Last season, it was 143, which is lower but not the fewest in the Premier League era and still gives you plenty of options to flick through for your goal of the season contenders.
What is more notable is the share of total goals coming from outside the penalty area.
Slowly but surely, that percentage is coming down, with just 11 per cent scored from range in 2023-24 — the lowest in the Premier League era and nearly half the rate that we saw in 2006-07.
This reflects a similar pattern in the share of shots taken outside the box, and it makes a lot of sense. Ultimately, it is a trend that is arguably better for the game, given that we are seeing more goals than ever come from well-worked sequences. Last season, there was an average of 3.3 goals per game, which was a record-breaking tally in the Premier League era.
That doesn’t mean shots from further out don’t have their place — it totally depends on the situation.
A research paper from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2021 shows long-range shooting can sometimes be a better option than playing that extra pass. The more passes you make, the more opportunities to lose the ball and collapse the attack altogether. Every action comes with risks.
Take the Harvey Barnes example for Newcastle United on Sunday.
As he comes inside, Wolves’ defenders don’t step out and the gap has opened up for him. Suddenly, he’s in space in a central area — common among inverted wingers coming onto their stronger foot — and he has a decision to make.
He could slip it through to Bruno Guimaraes between the lines, or go wide to Jacob Murphy (red arrows on Slide 2 below), but his momentum opens up the opportunity to shoot. If you look at his two team-mates at the moment Barnes makes contact with the ball, both arguably look offside anyway — so if he had passed, the whole attack could have broken down.
Barnes’ goal was a totally different opportunity from Jhon Duran’s for Aston Villa against Everton. Even I was thinking, “Surely he’s not going to shoot from that far out?” when he picked the ball up.
As Duran received it, Everton’s defence was in a good shape. Again, Duran could maybe slip it to Morgan Rogers or Ollie Watkins ahead of him (red arrows on Slide 2 below), but he only had one thing in his mind. To get that much power and bend on the ball was special.
Yes, these are low-probability shots, but let’s also not underestimate the quality that these players show when having a whack from distance.
I suspect that many of the elite players will be honing their long-range efforts in training so they are ready if those opportunities arise. I certainly worked on it — which is probably why I had four hernia operations. I used to love practising my shooting repetitively in training.
There are different techniques to work on when hitting the ball.
If you look at my strike here against Chelsea, I turned away from Marcel Desailly and got the ball to dip as it approached goal by hitting the top of it and generating that topspin.
You work on those things in training.
Other times, it may be right to do what Barnes did by hitting it with the inside of the foot, where you can shape it by bending it out-to-in…
… whereas Duran’s effort was more in-to-out as he hit across it.
With my golfer’s hat on, that’s the difference between a ‘draw’ and a ‘fade’ in your strike — there are so many different techniques you can use. It often depends on the situation, and how much time you have — whether you can set yourself and get your body shape right to take the right strike.
The ball itself can be a factor too. Unless you’re talking 60 years ago when they were notably heavier after they got wet, the footballs were often the same weight when I played. Although, when we played in the League Cup or European competitions, they did feel a little bit lighter to strike than the Premier League ones. Whether that led to more shots from distance is another story.
Then there are shots from distance that you just cannot explain.
Some of them, I’ve picked my spot, put my head down and hit it as hard as I can. For others, I don’t even know why I hit it — it just felt right and it was there to be struck without needing to look up.
My volley against Everton comes to mind.
It was one of those strikes where I still could not tell you what was going through my mind at the time, but it sat up perfectly and flew in.
I realise that, 99 times out of 100, those volleys go in the top row.
We all remember the screamers that fly in and conveniently forget the many shots that sail over the bar. That’s why looking at the data can be useful in overcoming our biases.
Even so, I still hope we see those spectacular goals.
The fact they are so rare is what makes them special.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
