The Assist That Wasn’t
How the BWSL's Most Creative Players Are Hiding in Plain Sight
Chelsea midfielder Erin Cuthbert has played 1,315 minutes in the BWSL this season. She has created 25 chances, delivered more expected goal values from set pieces than anyone else in the league, and generated an overall xA of 3.06. Cuthbert has zero assists.
That number - zero - is what the assists table will show to reflect her creative contribution to the Blues. It is also, by almost every other measure available, misleading. The assists table in football was built for a simpler understanding of the game. It rewards the final pass, the last touch of creativity before the goal, erasing everything that came before it.
The deep-lying midfielder who splits the defence to create the two-on-one does not appear on the assists table. The wide player who drags three defenders across to open the final third does not appear either. The table is not wrong about what it measures. It just measures the wrong thing.
The 2025-26 BWSL season makes this case better than most. Some of the most influential creative players in the league this season are buried in the middle of the assists table or absent from it entirely. Beneath the data, fans have always sensed this - the eye picks it up before the stats do, but the memory of that moment fades with the final whistle.
The metrics that surface the real creative picture are more precise than the assists table alone:
Taken together, they form a creative player’s true measure. Assists, on their own, do not.
Why the assists table is an incomplete portrait for creativity
Manchester City’s Kerstin Casparij and Aston Villa defender Lynn Wilms sit joint-top of the WSL assists table with seven contributions each. The natural assumption is that they have been the league's most creative players this season.
Wilms's xA across the season is 1.98. She has seven assists. Her teammates have converted at a rate that is more than three and a half times what the quality of her chances would ordinarily produce. That gap of -5.02 between her xA and her assists tally is the largest in the entire league.
Casparij's xA of 3.53 against the same seven assists produces a gap of -3.47. Both players rank outside the top 25 in Chances Created per 90 with Casparij sitting at 40th and Wilms 34th. The assists table has rewarded them generously.
Brighton & Hove Albion’s Nadine Noordam cements the cause for concern in understanding creativity through the assists table alone. Despite an xA of just 0.68, she has five assists this season. Manchester United players Jess Park and Ella Toone have been rewarded by good finishing as well as Man City’s Brazilian attacking midfielder Kerolin.
In fact, the majority of the players ranked in the top 10 for the 2025-26 BWSL assists table carry the privilege of a significant negative gap between their xA and assists provided. In other words, their chances are being buried at a rate higher than expected.
The contrast sharpens when you look at who sits on the other side of that gap. Cuthbert’s performance measured per 90 generates more expected assist value than seven of the 10 table toppers.
With zero assists to her name, Cuthbert has exactly 100 players ahead of her in the ranked assists table.
Cuthbert, Foord and what the zero hides
Erin Cuthbert’s xA of 3.06 is not the only number in disagreement with the assist table. Her Chances Created per 90 of 1.71 means she has outperformed six of the top 10 players in the assists table.
Cuthbert’s set-piece xA of 1.70 is the highest in BWSL this season, meaning her dead-ball delivery is generating the highest-quality scoring opportunities of any player in the league from similar situations. None of it has been converted.
Caitlin Foord, Marisa Olislagers, and Sandy Baltimore are some of the other players who have fallen victim to the same issue. Foord’s xA of 2.68 has returned zero assists. Olislagers has one assist from an xA of 2.83. Baltimore is the other Chelsea player with zero open play assists despite racking up an open play xA of 1.7.
The last remaining argument would be: have they accumulated these numbers by totalling a barrage of below-average chances? All four players - Cuthbert, Foord, Olislagers, and Baltimore - rank in the top 10 for Big Chances Created in the BWSL this season, indicating that these players have delivered individual high-quality chances better than the majority of the league. They just did so to no avail.
The genius of Caldentey's Football
Creativity has many doors. Let’s go through the one taken by Mariona Caldentey at Arsenal. She has three assists with an xA of 3.67 (fourth best in the league). Caldentey’s 2.46 Chances Created per 90 ranks third in the league. But the number that is easiest to miss is this: 427 accurate final-third passes this season, the highest in the league, and a figure that exceeds the second-placed player by 120.
Accurate final-third passes are not shots or assists; they are the currency of sustained attacking pressure - movement that keeps the game unpredictable in the most dangerous areas of the pitch.
For the opposition, defending is decisive when the ball is being passed back or sent in for the final play. Either they move up with the team or attack the ball when it comes inside the box, making it easy for them to commit to an action. The intelligent attackers know how to take away that clarity and Caldentey is a master at this game.
She keeps the attacking play unpredictable for longer than others, accurately moving the game in the last third until the opposition is caught in two minds - continue waiting for the final ball or be tempted to intercept a dangerous pass close to goal. That moment of indecision is where the gap opens.
Her 427 accurate final-third passes are testimony to this tactic and it has resulted in her generating 38 chances, with 33 of them coming from open play. The tables below are testament to the effectiveness of this style of play.
The fact that only three of those chances have been converted into official assists is a statement about Arsenal's finishing, not about Caldentey's contribution. Her genius lies in how smartly she extracts the reward of sustained pressure.
Creativity can come through many doors. Caldentey chose the route of discipline and hunting with patience.
The brilliance of two Laurens: Quality prevails as eye test matches finer data
Football has space for more than one right answer. If Caldentey defines patience and instinctive precision, Lauren James’s explosive football creates danger before the defence has time to organise. The Chelsea star has played only 587 minutes of BWSL football this season. She ranks first in Chances Created (CC) per 90 at 3.22, ahead of second-placed Lauren Hemp's 3.14. James also ranks first in Big Chances Created (BCC) per 90 at 0.92 with Hemp coming second at 0.84.
The Chelsea attacker has an xA/90 of 0.53. It is the highest recorded by any player this season. Hemp ranks second, registering an xA/90 of 0.46. The illustration below shows how James has fared per 90 when measured against the highest assist makers this season.
The per-90 numbers are not affected by availability. They ask a simpler question: when James plays, what does she produce? The answer is more creative output per minute than anyone else in this league. In contrast, the assists table, by measuring cumulative totals rather than rate or isolated metrics, makes her largely invisible in any ranked creative discussion.
The natural question that follows is that since James has played fewer than 600 minutes this season, are there other players who have matched that output over a longer stretch?
Lauren Hemp is the player where the official record and the underlying numbers converge most cleanly. She has registered six assists from an xA of 6.07. Her Chances Created per 90 are 3.14. Hemp’s 11 Big Chances Created is the highest total in the league.
Her xA gap of 0.07 is the second-smallest in the league, meaning her teammates have converted almost exactly what her chances were worth. Hemp's assists are an honest reflection of her relentless creative output. In a piece about what the assists table misses, she is the rare player it does not need to apologise for.
The Picture Repainted
The assists table will always have a place in how this league is discussed. It is clean, intuitive, and it captures real value. What it does not capture is the full shape of a creative performance. It leaves out Caldentey’s sustained occupation of dangerous territory, the per-minute output that makes Lauren James the most creative player on the pitch whenever she plays, and the chance quality that Cuthbert and Foord are generating into what has been, for now, an empty sky.
The repainted picture shows a league full of players building chances that never become goals, delivering passes that never become assists, and generating value that never makes the table. In essence, it shines a light on the truth that the most creative players are not always the most credited ones.
Word credit: Diptanil Roy
ARTICLE NOTE: All data is measured and analysed until April 24.04.2026
