Bukayo Saka News and Analysis

Ranking the 10 best Premier League playmakers in 2024

5Oct

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

Ranking the 10 best Premier League playmakers in 2024

From Bruno Fernandes and Martin Odegaard to James Maddison and Cole Palmer, the Premier League is filled with top-class playmakers who provide highlight-reel assists and slick dribbles. Here is a ranking of the best playmakers in the English top flight in 2024. 10. Andreas Pereira, Fulham A lot of people wrote Andreas Pereira off after he put up mediocre numbers for Manchester United for years before going to Brazil, returning, and turning his career around with another historic Premier League side in Fulham. Now, Pereira is playing the best football in his career at the age of 28 and has become one of the best passers in the final third in the entire Premier League. He is a playmaker in his prime and one of the premier set-piece specialists in the English top flight. Pereira had a...

Ranking the 10 best players in the Premier League right now during the 2024/25 season

30Sep

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

Ranking the 10 best players in the Premier League right now during the 2024/25 season

10. Liverpool RB Trent Alexander-Arnold Honestly, I can't comprehend why there are so many amateur pundits who spend their days disparaging Trent Alexander-Arnold's defending as if he were on the level of a backup at Lecce when, in fact, he's an excellent one-on-one defender as a fullback. It's just that people can't seem to understand that an attacking fullback who actually tries to add value to his team going forward is going to inevitably get caught out defensively on occasion, with the frequency of those occurrences unduly distorted by an army of fail comp "artists" who clearly need a job. Alexander-Arnold is a better one-on-one defender than Reece James, who apparently earned a reputation as a superior defensive right back on the grounds of being physically bigger and having on...

Ranking the 25 best Premier League wingers of the last 5 years

29Sep

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

Ranking the 25 best Premier League wingers of the last 5 years

Ranking the best wingers in the Premier League is a task so onerous that it may seem foolhardy, because even restricting the time span to the last five years doesn't make the task even easier. How do you rank, for example, a new breakout star like Anthony Gordon against a fallen superstar like Sadio Mane? Where does a gifted footballer like Riyad Mahrez stand against a former goal-scoring machine like Raheem Sterling? I tried my best to be fair and account for the unique merits each player brought to the table and avoid any club-based bias. I also decided to discard players who mostly offered value at non-winger positions, specifically Bernardo Silva, mostly to make my own job easier. (Don't worry, I'll have plenty of nice things to say about Silva in other pieces.) Finally, I did...

One Arsenal player has been even better than Bukayo Saka this season

23Sep

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

One Arsenal player has been even better than Bukayo Saka this season

Arsenal star right winger Bukayo Saka is arguably the best player in the Premier League and one of the best forwards in the world, showing an all-around ability to make an impact as a left-footed right winger that is so rare to find, especially in a 23-year-old. Saka added to his legacy in the Premier League with an assist for Gabriel Magalhaes from a corner in the Gunners' 2-2 draw against reigning champions Manchester City, meaning he now has 22 goal contributions in his career against "Big Six" clubs. It also means Saka has five assists and a goal in five Premier League starts in the 2024/25 season thus far, building on his 2023/24 season in which he was one of the top contenders for the Player of the Season award. Yet as excellent as Saka continues to be for Arsenal, the best ...

Injury News: Is Bukayo Saka playing against Atalanta and Manchester City?

17Sep

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

Injury News: Is Bukayo Saka playing against Atalanta and Manchester City?

Arsenal superstar Bukayo Saka is having another strong start to a season as he looks to wrap up Premier League Player of the Season honors in 2024/25 and lead the Gunners to an elusive title triumph over Manchester City. This weekend, Arsenal will get a huge opportunity at a six-point swing in the early season over their main title rivals, as they will face the Citizens at the Etihad on Sunday afternoon. Saka limped off the pitch this past weekend in his club's vital 1-0 win over North London derby rivals Tottenham, leaving Arsenal fans concerned about the status of their best player ahead of the Man City game after a possible injury in the 86th minute. However, per the Evening Standard, Saka did not suffer an injury and was simply dealing with cramps. Therefore, he is expected to...

An early look at the 10 best candidates to win the 2025 Ballon d’Or

9Sep

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Champions League, Features

An early look at the 10 best candidates to win the 2025 Ballon d’Or

I always find it funny how the Ballon d'Or narrative changes over the course of a year - or season, now that the timeframe of the award has changed. Like, when the 2023/24 season first started, all anyone could do was praise Jude Bellingham for taking LaLiga by storm, putting Real Madrid back on top, and scoring bangers in El Clasico to help affirm Real's return to dominance. The guy was leading the league in goals as a midfielder, and while his performances did decline a bit in the second half of the season, we are talking about a decline from being by far the best player in Europe to "just" being great. And it's not like Bellingham was bad at the Euros either. England almost won it, and he was literally the best player in the Final which England came agonizingly close to winning...

EPL Burning Questions: Marcus Rashford’s future? Brighton back to Europe? 3 new stars for Aston Villa?

19Aug

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

EPL Burning Questions: Marcus Rashford’s future? Brighton back to Europe? 3 new stars for Aston Villa?

Here are five burning questions around the Premier League after the first weekend of action for the 2024/25 season. Can Bukayo Saka be the Player of the Season? Bukayo Saka lost out to title rival Phil Foden for the 2023/24 Premier League Player of the Season award, which didn't sit too well with Liverpool fans (Mohamed Salah) or Arsenal fans. It feels like Saka is underappreciated outside of North London, possibly the victim of his own consistency and unselfish, all-around play as a superstar winger who is just as willing to create, hug the touchline, or even defend as he is to cut inside on his trusty left foot and score. Saka showed that all-around quality in a comfortable 2-0 win for Arsenal against Wolves, and although the performance was nothing less than what Mikel Arteta an...

Every Premier League team’s most valuable player heading into the 2024/25 season

4Aug

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Features, Premier League

Every Premier League team’s most valuable player heading into the 2024/25 season

Addressing the topic of a player's value is extremely difficult in world football, especially when comparing across positions and even ascribing value to a player specific to the team they play for. One way to define "value" is an equivalence to importance. That is to say, a player is valuable because he is important to his team, and the "Most Valuable Player", which is the phrasing Serie A uses for its annual award in a hearken to American sports, is therefore the player who helped his team the most. But in this article ,I'd like to discuss value in a less nebulous but equally challenging realm, which is a player's financial value on the transfer market in a perfect vacuum in which leverage, contract, and overall situation are taken out. Let's take a look at the most valuable pla...

Ranking the 5 best England players at Euro 2024

16Jun

By Cody AcevedaNo Comments

Features

Ranking the 5 best England players at Euro 2024

England come into the 2024 UEFA European Championship as huge favorites to win it all. When you look at the talent available for the Three Lions, it’s no question why this is the case. Here are the five best England national team players who will make the difference for England at Euro 2024. If England do finally get the job done and win a major international tournament, it will be because of these players. 5. Bukayo Saka Arsenal’s ‘Star Boy’ has gone from strength to strength since missing a key penalty in England’s loss in the Euro 2020 Final to Italy on penalties. Saka has been instrumental to Arsenal’s improvement under Mikel Arteta. Without the tricky winger, the Gunners would not have finished second in the Premier League in the last two seasons. The 22-year-old scored...

2024 Ballon d’Or Rankings after Jude Bellingham saves El Clasico again

21Apr

By Kevin ParviziNo Comments

Champions League, Features

2024 Ballon d’Or Rankings after Jude Bellingham saves El Clasico again

With the heated Premier League title race coming to its concluding stretch and the Champions League semifinals set to get underway, the 2023/24 season is about to reach its peak conclusion, with plenty of intrigue remaining despite most of Europe's other top five leagues settling results. The 2024 Ballon d'Or rankings are now increasingly on the minds of fans, with supporters from all over the globe debating the merits of their superstar players and how they all stack up against each other. For example, how do the young stars of Xabi Alonso's historic Bayer Leverkusen side stack up against the elite superstars of the Premier League? Will a Real Madrid or Barcelona player take home the Ballon d'Or again? Here are the latest rankings after Jude Bellingham, the man of the hour, fired...