What makes a ‘clutch’ player? It’s an ability to produce at the most important moment, qualities that can be picked up in statistics but not necessarily defined by numbers alone. In one way or another, the players below (in an all-out, attacking 3-4-1-2 formation) showed clutch tendencies in the Premier League and beyond last season. To make it more interesting, we’re including only one player per team.
GK: Emiliano Martínez (Aston Villa)
Modern goalkeepers have to bring much more than shot-stopping to the table, but when it comes to the crunch keeping the ball out of the net is still a valuable asset. Martínez was Argentina’s hero in the World Cup final, producing a superb late save to take the game to penalties and making two saves in the shootout. Saving penalties in a World Cup final is as clutch as it gets but Martínez has also impressed back in England with Villa. He led the league in high claims and was second to Nick Pope in sweeper clearances, suggesting a player who can be relied on to deal with late set-pieces and dangerous counterattacks.
CB: James Tarkowski (Everton)
Everton fought a successful nine-month battle against relegation and the centre-back Tarkowski played every minute of it. No other player spent so long in the Premier League pressure cooker but the former Burnley defender is not here just for showing up. Tarkowski boasts some remarkable numbers: he cleared the Everton lines close to 200 times, made 51 interceptions and blocked 78 shots on goal – almost double his nearest rivals’ totals. Largely deployed as a human wall at the back, he scored one goal, but it was still pretty significant – the winner against Arsenal in February that changed the title and relegation battles.
CB: Gabriel Magalhães (Arsenal)
Arsenal stormed into title contention with a high-intensity attacking gameplan that required defenders to play their part in the buildup, while also maintaining a constant vigilance against counterattacks. Nobody made more successful tackles as the last man in the top flight than Gabriel, whose defensive partnership with William Saliba was close to unbreakable before the Frenchman was injured. In his third season at Arsenal, Gabriel cut back the lapses in concentration and discipline and even when a costly mistake led to a Fulham goal in August, he made amends by scoring the winner. The centre-back was a regular threat in the opposition penalty area and secured another three points away to Chelsea.
CB: Ethan Pinnock (Brentford)
Thomas Frank’s hard-running, late-scoring, giant-slaying side are among the Premier League’s most clutch outfits; most of their starting XI could feature here. We’re giving the nod to Pinnock, with the centre-back leading the division in clearances and in the top five for blocks and tackles, while his three goals at the other end brought in seven points. Pinnock’s emergence as one of the top-flight’s most reliable defenders is all the more remarkable given he was playing for Dulwich Hamlet as recently as 2016. Pinnock credits the intensity of non-league football for making him a better player. “Players aren’t getting paid loads, they’re playing for their families,” he said. “Everyone had that tenacity and physical edge. Every game meant something.”
RM: Michael Olise (Crystal Palace)
There may be no better single moment to demonstrate the essence of clutch-ness than Olise’s equaliser against Manchester United in January. With his side 1-0 down in stoppage time, Olise stepped up, swept a free kick into the top corner and rather than celebrating wildly, simply walked back to the halfway line. Olise’s former teammates have said the French winger sees goals as part of his job and that was only his second of the season. Where Olise has really excelled is in creating goals, his 11 assists mean he contributed to a third of Palace’s 40 goals. Crucially, he regularly set teammates up to score against relegation rivals, including a hat-trick of assists in a 5-1 win at Leeds that showed both teams’ direction of travel.
CM: Ilkay Gündogan (Manchester City)
Pep Guardiola’s treble winners have clutch players everywhere you look but even within this slick winning machine, Gündogan stands out. Teammate Kyle Walker said of his captain: “He turns into prime Zidane at the business end of the season.” Gündogan doesn’t just become a more important asset as the stakes are raised. He becomes a different type of player, trading hard yards in midfield for moments of inspiration, like the outrageous opening goal just less than 13 seconds into the FA Cup final. In the league, his performance in a tough battle at Everton finally broke Arsenal’s spirit, an improvised flick for the opener, followed immediately by an assist for Erling Haaland. Guardiola’s first City signing has decided to move on and the manager faces a tough task to replace the X-factor he offers in the biggest games.
CM: Declan Rice (West Ham)
In a season of European glory and domestic mediocrity for West Ham, one player delivered consistently. With reports of a potential £100m move to Arsenal, Rice has often been labelled as overrated. In truth, he does the simple things very well – like winning the ball. Rice made 63 successful interceptions last season, comfortably the most in the league, and also topped the charts in gaining possession (334 times). These league-leading stats for a team who finished 14th show a player with a key clutch quality, putting the team on his back at key moments. Rice turns defence into attack, moving upfield with the ball and notched up a team-high 138 attacking involvements. It is little wonder Arsenal, who thrive on recycling possession, see him as the missing piece of their jigsaw.
LM: Kaoru Mitoma (Brighton)
The Japanese winger is the latest hidden gem to emerge at the Amex and announced himself at the World Cup with the cut-back seen around the globe. There was so much debate about whether the ball had gone out of play before Mitoma crossed for Ao Tanaka to score, the moment of improvisational skill was somewhat overshadowed. Mitoma put that right when he returned to Brighton, emerging as an impact player under Roberto De Zerbi. In the Premier League, a run of six goals and four assists in a 12-game purple patch put the Seagulls on the path to European football. Mitoma also shone in the FA Cup, where his brilliant instinctive finish eliminated Liverpool and bolstered his personal highlight reel.
CAM: Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United)
In this longest of football seasons, no outfield player spent more minutes on the pitch than Bruno Fernandes. That in itself is key – the first hurdle for any clutch player is to be on the field in the first place – and Erik ten Hag leaned heavily on his captain in a successful first season at Old Trafford. This was not Fernandes’s most explosive season but he still produced 14 goals and 15 assists in four competitions and his solid-but-unspectacular league numbers (eight goals, eight assists) may be down to his teammates. Fernandes ranked first in through balls, expected assists and key chances made. The Portuguese playmaker is still creating three key chances per game, he just needs a striker who can regularly convert them.
CF: Callum Wilson (Newcastle)
Wilson ended the season with 18 league goals, the highest Premier League tally for a Newcastle player since Alan Shearer in 2003-04. The four players who outscored him – Haaland, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah and Ivan Toney – spread their goals throughout the season, while Wilson crept up the charts with 11 in a 10-game stretch that secured a top-four finish. The 30-year-old also had the fewest on-field minutes among the league’s top 10 scorers, boasting 0.86 goals per 90 minutes, second only to the free-scoring Haaland. Wilson scored a league-high four times off the bench and converted three penalties from three taken, becoming the league’s most clinical player exactly when it mattered most.
CF: Taiwo Awoniyi (Nottingham Forest)
Forest punched above their collective weight to stay in the Premier League, with a hastily assembled team relying on the performances of key players to steer them to safety. Forest signed 30 players last season, but none had a bigger impact than the centre-forward Awoniyi, who scored 10 league goals. More importantly, all but one of them helped to secure precious points and the Nigerian scored the winning goal on four occasions. After a groin injury that coincided with a worrying Forest slump, Awoniyi returned with a burst of six goals in their final four games to help them survive with a degree of comfort that at one stage looked impossible.
