Death of the long-range goal? It's alive and well!

Tom Hancock analyses the history of long-range goals in the Premier League era, whether there has been a decline in shots from distance over recent seasons and what the trend is in 2024/25 so far.

As Jhon Duran received the ball 30 yards from goal on Saturday night, the Villa Park crowd audibly implored their No 9 to “SHOOOOOOT”.

It was as if they were staging a neatly orchestrated protest at the supposed death of the great Premier League screamer – the type of goal that we’ve been told is becoming more and more a thing of the past.

When Aston Villa's Colombian star’s rip-roaring thunderbolt almost ripped the net from the frame of the goal, the cacophonous reaction from the stands felt like not only a celebration of Villa coming back from 2-0 down to lead Everton 3-2, but like a sonic manifestation of profound nostalgia. Strikes like this aren’t supposed to happen any more, are they? 

Duran's stunner v Everton

A desperate measure 

Duran’s early Guinness Goal of the Season contender was one of three winners scored from outside the box in Matchweek 4 – along with Callum Hudson-Odoi’s precise curler for Nottingham Forest away to Liverpool and Harvey Barnes’ arrowed blast for Newcastle United at Wolves.

It’s about as thrilling a way as there is to clinch victory, but that’s not all the long-range goal is good for. Having a go from more than 18 yards isn’t an ability that players magically unlock late in games - Duran and Hudson-Odoi’s decisive efforts weren’t even THAT late, coming in the 76th and 72nd minutes respectively - or in win-chasing situations.

A long-range attempt is still a perfectly valid means of scoring at any time; Dwight McNeil opened the scoring for Everton against Villa from outside the box after 16 minutes, Marcus Rashford doubled Manchester United’s advantage at Southampton from a very similar position on 41 minutes and Fabian Schar’s deflected equaliser for Newcastle came in the 75th minute. 

Last weekend’s Premier League action did a useful job of showing the state of play of long-range shots and goals today, and of diluting – if not entirely debunking – the notion that such events are going extinct.

Shots from outside the box accounted for 84 of the 256 non-penalty shots in Matchweek 4, working out at just shy of 33 per cent - only around 5 per cent below the average per season between 2014/15 and 2023/24.

Screamers were never the norm 

The number of shots from outside the box per Premier League game has dropped steadily over the past two decades, with the five-year average falling in each of the past 13 seasons – from 12.8 in 2011/12 to 8.8 in 2023/24.  

The table below shows how the number of long-range shots in the Premier League has displayed a downward trend since 2003/04. 

Shots outside box/90 since 2003/04

There were an average of 9.1 shots from outside the box last season, compared with a peak of 13.3 in 2003/04. It wouldn’t be unreasonable, then, to expect the number of goals from outside the box across the same period to follow a similar trend; such expectation would not be met, though. 

The number of long-range Premier League goals in recent years has been considerably lower than during the height of the trending "Barclaysman" era – between 2006/07 (188 goals from outside the box) and 2007/08 (191 goals from outside the box) campaign.

But compared with the average per season of 150.3 goals since the competition’s inception in 1992, it’s nothing particularly noteworthy (there were 143 goals from outside the box last season, 145 in 2022/23 and 144 in 2021/22). 

The graph below shows how the proportion of Premier League goals from outside the box has, for the most part, stayed within a relatively narrow range since the 1992/93 season.

The xG factor

What’s actually happening, then? Well, the fairly consistent decrease in the number of shots from outside the box is indicative of a fundamental change in the approach to chance creation in the Premier League. 

The much-maligned Expected Goals (xG) metric has not – as its most hypercynical critics might claim – ruined football; players do not take a moment to consider the xG of every goalscoring opportunity that falls their way. That would be absurd. 

However, since its introduction in 2012, xG has, through analysts’ and coaches’ increased emphasis on it, gradually reduced the average shot distance in the Premier League. Between 2006/07 and 2023/24, it fell from 19.3 yards - just outside the box - to 16.2 yards, a couple of yards inside the box.

It comes as no great surprise, then, that the proportion of overall shots taken from outside the box is also falling. In 2023/24, shots from outside the box accounted for 33.1 per cent of non-penalty shots in the Premier League, 10 per cent fewer than in 2014/15 – a reflection, it would appear, of players unleashing fewer speculative efforts which might go in, but generally don’t. 

The table below shows how the share of non-penalty shots from outside the box has almost perennially shrunk across each of the past 10 Premier League campaigns. 

Ratio of shots from outside box 

But perhaps the most dramatic shift of all has come where free-kicks are concerned. Last season in the Premier League, there were only 11 goals directly from free-kicks from 283 attempts – both the lowest figures on record. 

Prime "Barclaysmen" like Morten Gamst Pedersen and Laurent Robert loved to bang goals in from dead-ball situations. They scored 10 and 11 free-kicks respectively during their memorable Premier League careers, but such specialists seem to be few and far between at present. 

More pertinent – and more accurately quantifiable – is the fact that the number of free-kicks awarded in the final third, prime shooting range, is on the decrease, as is the proportion of final-third free-kicks which are taken as shots. 

So, really, what we’re seeing is not "the slow death of the screamer" Rather, we’re seeing a more refined approach to it, and if the start of this Premier League campaign (18 goals from outside the box in 40 games – a small sample size, admittedly) is a sign of things to come, we’ll have enjoyed 171 long-range goals by the end of it – the most in the competition for 11 years and the fifth-most this century. 

The screamer is alive and well.