It’s always fun to make predictions in football. They’re rarely right, but that’s half of the enjoyment. We’ve all seen articles claiming ‘this will be the England team in 10 years’ time’, which inevitably prove to be hopelessly inaccurate.
The progress for young players is never linear, the path is littered with pitfalls, which can prove their undoing. After his debut against Derby County, everyone is excited to see more of Ben Doak over the coming years, but it’s impossible to know at this point how well he will perform at the pinnacle of the game.
With established players we do at least have a body of work upon which we can base forecasts. As top flight football has hit the pause button for a month, it’s an interesting time to wonder how many Premier League goals Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson might create before their careers draw to a close.
READ MORE: Trent Alexander-Arnold explains what his Liverpool critics always fail to mention
The timing is particularly pertinent, as the latter equalled the record for assists by a defender in Liverpool’s last match prior to the World Cup, a 3-1 win over Southampton. By setting up goals for Roberto Firmino and Darwin Nunez, Robertson moved onto 53 Premier League assists (with four of them occurring while with his previous club, Hull City).
This matches the mark recorded by Leighton Baines, who, like Robertson, came to prominence in a smaller team (Wigan Athletic) before representing a larger club on Merseyside with distinction for many seasons. But where the left-backs differ significantly is the number of appearances each has made in the competition. Baines played in 420 Premier League games whereas Robertson ‘only’ has 230 under his belt.
On this basis, the Scot should obliterate the previously held record before his career is over. If he were to maintain his rate for setting up goals and play another 190 matches, Liverpool’s number 26 would finish with 97 assists. At present, that would be the fifth most by any player in any position.
In reality, age will bite and the numbers will slow down. Baines picked up nine assists in his age 29 season (2014/15, per FBRef) but only added another seven over the final five years of his career. Robertson is currently 28-years-old and already gets rested for Kostas Tsimikas as he simply cannot play every single match any more. There’s no reason to think his assist rate will dip significantly but his pitch time almost certainly will in the years ahead.
And in any case, Liverpool’s first choice left-back will only be the temporary holder of the coveted ‘assists by a defender’ record. His colleague on the opposite flank will come steaming past before too much longer.
Alexander-Arnold currently has 45 assists to his name, which means just 46 players from any position have ever recorded more in the Premier League. The Reds’ right-back has already had three campaigns in which he created at least 12 league goals, and only Kevin De Bruyne and Cesc Fabregas (four apiece) have had more in the last 30 years of top flight football in England.
Remarkably, even though he amassed 4.3 expected assists over his last 19 league matches (per Understat), not one of the 38 chances Alexander-Arnold created in that period was converted. There could be a deluge of assists on the way if the statistician’s best friend (regression to the mean) comes into play.
Either way, despite a half-season drought, Alexander-Arnold currently holds a better assist-per-game rate than Ryan Giggs, the all-time record holder for creating Premier League goals. If Trent were able to play every match for a little over 12 years and set up an average of 0.26 goals per game as he has to this point, he could eventually top the standings.
That’s an incredibly tall order, and it is unlikely the Liverpool full-back can match Giggs’ total of 162 assists. But then the 13 he logged in 2019/20 gave him a better single season than the Manchester United man ever had, so who knows? Predictions are very hard to nail, admiring the record setting assist rates of Robertson and Alexander-Arnold is the easy part.
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