Fifty-two and forty-eight
Lauren Hemp squared the ball to Khadija Shaw at Aston Villa days ago and joined a club of seven. The assist, in Manchester City’s 4-1 win, took her to 100 Women’s Super League goal involvements: 52 goals and 48 assists across 154 appearances.
Six players got there before her. Vivianne Miedema sits on 138, Beth Mead on 127, Bethany England on 114, Fran Kirby and Nikita Parris on 111 apiece, Shaw herself on 105. Hemp is 26, and she spent much of 2024-25 injured, playing just 730 league minutes.
What separates her is the split. Nobody else in that group reached 100 with such an even balance between scoring and creating. The others leaned one way. Hemp did not.
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The carry is the weapon
Strip the game back and Hemp does one thing better than almost anyone in England. She moves the ball from a harmless place to a dangerous one by herself.
Her 2,187 career WSL carries rank fifth on record since 2015-16, and the four players above her are all defenders. In 2021-22 she carried into the penalty area 59 times, more than any player in the league. The following season she pushed that to 62, still the highest single-season figure anyone has recorded.
That 2021-22 campaign is when the end product arrived. Hemp topped the WSL that year for dribbles completed, successful open-play crosses, assist-ending carries, chance-ending carries and take-on-ending carries. Five categories, one player, just before England won the Euros.
In 2023-24 she registered eight assists, the most in the division. Seven of them followed a carry. No player has managed more assists after a carry in a single WSL season.
The numbers travel
Her record holds up outside England. Since the start of 2022-23, only Mariona Caldentey has created more open-play chances across Europe’s top five leagues, 193 to Hemp’s 192. Nobody has created more chances following a ball carry than her 86, and nobody has completed more open-play crosses than her 118.
Her 67 big chances created are the most in WSL history. Her 48 assists are the second most.
City won the title last season with Hemp leading the league for chances created, open-play chances created, successful open-play crosses and chance-ending carries. She has opened 2026-27 with 11 chances created in two matches, again the most in the competition.
She was never really a touchline winger. She wins the ball back, drives it forward, beats her opponent and picks the pass. Asking which of those she does best rather misses the point.
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