Jarrod Bowen, the Championship’s ultimate luxury
The Championship kicked off on Friday, and it has picked up a player who has no real business being there. Jarrod Bowen is staying at West Ham despite relegation. The Hammers captain will now be playing outside the top flight for the first time since 2019-20 and his spell at Hull City.
The numbers tell the story. Over the last three Premier League seasons, only seven players have scored more than his 38 goals. In that same spell, only Mohamed Salah (35) and Bruno Fernandes (39) have created more than his 25 assists. Overall, Bowen has 65 goals and 49 assists in 231 top-flight games for West Ham, a club record in the Premier League with 114 goal involvements.
One detail will comfort West Ham fans: in his last three seasons at Hull, between 2017-18 and 2019-20, nobody in the Championship bettered his 64 goal involvements, including 52 goals.
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Vipotnik up against a 22-year-old record
Zan Vipotnik was not expected to end up here. Seven goals in 42 matches in his first season in England, then 23 strikes and the Championship golden boot last year, plus a place in the team of the season for good measure. Swansea finished 11th, nine points off the play-offs, leaning almost entirely on him: the Slovenian scored 40.4% of the club’s goals, 23 out of 57. No team-mate got past six.
His finishing explains plenty. Among the 16 players to score more than 10 goals in the division, Vipotnik had the best non-penalty conversion rate at 22.0%. The arrival of Ross Stewart, who posted the second-best goals-per-90 ratio in the league last season, should give him a bit more room to breathe.
There is still a historic hurdle. The last player to score 20 or more goals in back-to-back Championship seasons was Marlon Harewood, in 2002-03 and 2003-04. Twenty-two years without a successor. Vipotnik is also being linked with promoted Hull City, which would make the maths even trickier.
The names on the rise
Othmane Maamma is the name being mentioned most. At 20, the Watford winger has come off a U20 World Cup win with the tournament’s Golden Ball in his pocket. On the pitch, he dominated the Championship dribbling stats: first for attempts per 90 minutes (8.9), first for successful dribbles (2.9), first for dribbles in the opposition half (6.5) among players with at least 800 minutes.
Leo Scienza ended his first season at Southampton with 10 assists in 39 matches, the best total at the club. The Brazilian stood out most on the ball: 11 goals created after carrying it forward, three more than anyone else in the division.
Rounding out the Opta list are Ethan Galbraith, signed by Stoke for 10 million pounds, Lorent Tolaj, who joined Bristol City after 18 goals and 113 shots in League One, and Mason Melia, 18, loaned by Tottenham to Lincoln City after 21 goals in the Irish league, the first of them coming at 15 years and 281 days.
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