Chris Wood’s 2020-21 Premier League Season In Review
Coming into the new season, Chris Wood set himself a target of 20 goals. He did not achieve it. In fact for two-thirds of the term it didn’t even look like he was gonna get close. His form was pretty average and a few major missed chances along the way piled the pressure on him even more. Woody was snatching at his shots. He was a bit too self-conscious in his movements. It didn’t help that the rest of the team wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either and then to make matters worse he got injured in a loss against Chelsea in late-January and at that point relegation was still very much on the cards.
Then The Woodsman returned. Next thing you know he was ripping off the finest two months of form in his entire career. The bloke was unstoppable. He was scoring or creating every game. Eight goals and three assists in the space of eight matches including his first ever hat-trick in the PL and while it didn’t coincide with imperious Burnley results... they did just enough thanks to his little burst to safely secure another season of top flight football.
Plus while he didn’t get to 20 goals, he did still get to 12 which was enough to put him in some fine company as one of only seven players to have hit double figures in each of the last four years: Harry Kane, Mo Salah, Jamie Vardy, Alexandre Lacazette, Son Heung-Min, and Sadio Mane are the only other players with double digits in the last four straight terms.
Those eight games were magical, nine games if you count the one against Leicester just before that which was his first start after injury - since although he didn’t score in that one, the ingredients for his impending dominance were there and clear. But to get the context of his golden path we’ve gotta contrast that with why he was so rubbish before that.
Also, no sooner had Burnley avoided the drop than they promptly took their foot off the pedal with a 4-0 loss to Leeds, a 3-0 loss to Liverpool, and a 1-0 loss to Sheffield United. Chris Wood started all three games but went scoreless; he did have one great chance to take a first half lead against Liverpool but he snatched at it (keeping The Reds in the same territory as Chelsea & Manchester City as ‘traditional’ top six teams that he’s never scored against... though he did break his duck against Arsenal during The Streak, with kind regards to Granit Xhaka).
So we’ll mostly ignore that trio at the end - though they do come into consideration for the overall numbers. Because it’s by splitting his season into Before The Streak and then The Streak Itself that we best illustrate the sudden improvements he made when he returned from that injury...
* npxG = non-penalty expected goals | xA = expected assists
Confidence is a wonderful thing. All the scouting and analytics in the world trying to assess players and performances and technical abilities and sometimes all it takes is a shot of the good vibes to take a player to the next level. For the first two-thirds he was struggling for confidence and then during The Streak he was full to the brim of it and just look what a difference it made...
🚫 vs Leicester City
⚽️ vs Arsenal
⚽️ at Everton
⚽️🅰️ at Southampton
🅰️ vs Newcastle
🚫 at Man Utd
⚽️⚽️⚽️🅰️ at Wolves
⚽️ vs West Ham
⚽️ at Fulham
To be fair, there were a few other factors at work, not just confidence. Matej Vydra got a run of games while Wood was out and did enough to maintain that starting gig as Wood’s primary strike-partner in the 800 minutes of The Streak. The pair had hardly ever played together despite both being at the club for multiple seasons, Vydra’s usually only been seen as an option on the bench or for rotated cup teams. Yet that dynamic proved instantly fantastic for them both.
Vydra is a quick, mobile forward who can stretch the defensive line running deep and can get there in support of Wood when he’s holding the ball up. That led to an increase in defensive pressures from the front (which is kinda how The Streak got started with goals from the high press – see Wood’s goal vs Arsenal for example) and it also led to a steady level of involvement. Wood had 30+ touches in all of those nine Streak games. That’s not heaps by any means. Central defenders and midfielders are commonly in the triple figures for the top teams. But for someone like Wood, who is playing for a team that doesn’t play a lot of keep-ball and who is at his best when he’s working efficiently, that’s a tidy baseline.
Football can be so simple sometimes. Burnley winning the ball higher up the park allows them to involved their striker more. Involve their striker more and you’ve got time to bring the fullbacks into the play, to get midfielders across in support. You’re crossing the ball from more dangerous areas. You’re winning more set pieces. All of which leads to better goal scoring opportunities and it ain’t hard to realise that the closer you are to the goal, the more likely you are to score. Chris Wood, like most strikers, is living proof of that. Only two of his 47 Premier League goals have come from outside the penalty area. Here are shot charts from the past season, the first one with all of Wood’s shots and the second with only his goals...
This is a man who Knows His Areas and if you play to those tendencies and he will provide goals. For reference, the next top scorer at the club was Matej Vydra with 6 goals and half of those were in cup competitions. Nobody else scored more than 3 in the PL for Burnley – something Woodsy did in half a game against Wolverhampton. Also worth noting that the three assists he had this season are a new personal best for him... and he got all three within a four-game window. Who knows, maybe there are some new areas being uncovered too.
This was far from a one-man team of course but our boy didn’t win Players’ Player of the Year at the team prizegiving for nothing. He had 38.4% of Burnley’s total expected goals per ninety mins. Only Christian Benteke (42.2%), Dominic Calvert-Lewin (41.9%), and Callum Wilson (40.5%) had bigger slices of their team’s pie than that. Wood’s usual dance partner Ashley Barnes only started 15 PL games due to injury. Jay Rodriguez was primarily a bench option for Sean Dyche. Neither of them were up to much when they played either. Barnes scored 3 goals in 1337 minutes while Rodriguez scored 1 in 1256 mins. Even Vydra wasn’t really a goal-scorer, more of a complementary guy for Wood, as the Czech forward scored 3 goals in 1368 mins. Meanwhile Chris Wood scored 12 in 2750. Old mate was huuuuge for the Clarets.
One thing we cannot celebrate is that Wood lost his Golden Flag status. After two straight seasons as the man with the most offsides in the Premier League, this time he fell way short of Jamie Vardy. 24 of them for Wood, 36 of them for Vardy. Wood was seventh overall. Probably safe to say that the way the offside rule was enforced this time had something to do with that, with the flags kept down until the end of phases of play in case the VAR wanted to have a say about anything.
Vardy’s offsides are more to do with speed in behind whereas Wood’s are about playing off the shoulder of the last man. His unfold slower and therefore don’t always end up in a position where the lino is forced to flag it – many of them potentially going uncalled. At least that’s the theory, it could be wrong. His offside rate did increase during The Streak so that plays into the idea that he’s better when he’s pushing the line.
Here are all the official Premier League stats lists in which Chris Wood features on the first page:
12 goals, tied for 11th in the Premier League (with Iheanacho, Ings, & Wilson)
70 total shots, tied for 19th (with Sterling – Kane’s 137 led the way)
39 shots on target, 7th in the PL (Kane’s 53 were first)
19 big chances missed, tied for 2nd (with Salah & Vardy)
24 offsides, 7th in the PL (Vardy led with 36, breaking Wood’s two year reign)
154 aerial challenges won, tied 4th (with Calvert-Lewin – Tomas Soucek was miles ahead with 234)
Excellent work from the big fella, who can hopefully maintain these levels for several more seasons in the Premier League. He’s already got 137 PL appearances with 47 goals. A couple more years to go to catch Ryan Nelsen’s kiwi record of 198 games in the English top flight (Winston Reid is on 166 – maybe he’ll get to add to that, maybe not). But he’s miles ahead with goals. Put succinctly there’s not been a kiwi striker delivering like Chris Wood at the top of the sport since Wynton Rufer and there wasn’t anyone else before Wynton. Wood’s hatty against Wolves was the first by a New Zealander in the Prem, adding Aotearoa to the list of nations to have been represented on that list.
The Streak doesn’t entirely overwrite the first two-thirds of the season but close enough. And the hat-trick was the peak of his peak. Play like that and we can probably now expect an offseason full of random transfer rumours and general silliness. Wouldn’t even be surprised if we get a tangible response in the form of a new contract – Wood has two years remaining on the extension he agreed to in 2019 and few would argue he’s earned a pay-rise. And if he can sustain the standards he set for himself during the last few months over the course of a full season next time then that 20-goal hurdle won’t seem quite so ambitious after all.
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