Newcastle United’s Yoane Wissa and the Art of Clutch Goalscoring | OneFootball

The Newcastle United summer striker search landed on Yoane Wissa, when it was said and done.

In the meantime, Eddie Howe’s Mags pushed hard for Wolves’ Jorgen Strand Larsen.

Whilst they were also reportedly (by less reliable sources and my own wishful thinking) sniffing around Crystal Palace’s Jean-Philippe Mateta.

Three “needs must” strikers on the surface.

However, dig into their goalscoring and you’ll find strikers who score when it actually matters.

I’m defining “clutch goals” (ED: ‘A clutch goal is a goal that is scored by a player in a high-pressure, crucial moment of a game that significantly impacts the outcome’) as goals scored by a player when their team is either level or coming from behind on the scoreline. Nothing more or less. After all, “goals change games” is a well-worn adage in the sport for a reason: Can you put the ball in the back of the net when it fundamentally changes the outcome of the match result?

It’s very different being able to answer “yes” to that question, as opposed to helping your team top up the scoreline when they’re already one, two or three goals up and you’ve likely scored in acres of space against the run of play (looking at you, Messi!).

Yoane Wissa: The Clutch King Newcastle actually signed

I always liked Wissa in a Brentford shirt even though I didn’t like the way he lost his head over the summer – especially after deadline day proved that Brentford were 100% on the money playing the waiting game. But Wissa’s a Mag now, meaning what’s good for Wissa is good for Newcastle and vice versa.

Watching Wissa’s 2024/25 goalscoring season, the bulk of his goals (14 of 19 league goals scored) were effectively clutch goals. I found that to be pretty incredible… even more so when you consider none of them were penalties. That’s a 73.7% clutch rate from a striker who doesn’t pad his stats from the spot.

There’s another quirk: four of Wissa’s league goals came from him gambling on rebounds/flick-ons in the box from Brentford long-throws. Maybe Newcastle could get Tino Livramento in on the act, this season, for Wissa to keep rolling the dice.

The ones that got away

Signing Mateta would’ve been the dream for me. I’ve been wanting this guy to be a Mag for the last two seasons because, frankly, I just love watching the guy play football. He scored 12 clutch goals out of his 14 PL goal total last season. Only two penalties and one clutch penalty of the two. Mateta knows how to make a difference, but his influence in the Palace side – among key departures like Zaha, Olise and now Eze – means Mateta now has life made as Palace’s main man.

The more his teammates are sold on elsewhere, incredibly, the more Mateta becomes a prolific goalscorer for Palace. That kind of key role in the squad is not something Newcastle could ever offer Mateta.

Elsewhere. In the Midlands, Newcastle pushed hard and waited long to try signing Strand Larsen, but Wolves weren’t going to part ways with their number nine. Some call JSL slow and a limited player but 11 of his 14 PL goals were scored at clutch moments last season. The Norwegian striker’s not a penalty taker either, so there’s no stat padding from the spot there.

Both players fit the exact same profile Newcastle ultimately got in Yoane Wissa: strikers who deliver when the game’s on the line. Mateta is 28 and the first two seasons of his PL career were nothing to write home about in terms of goalscoring, while JSL is only one season deep into the Premier League and only turned 25 years old this past spring. I fancy JSL to be on Eddie Howe’s radar for the long term.

How Newcastle’s targets stack up against the league’s best

I needed to get my feet back on the ground after getting hyped by Wissa’s goalscoring at key moments. Was this clutch trait in Wissa’s game as unique as I believed, or was I just getting carried away once I looked at last season’s other top goalscoring strikers?

**Ollie Watkins – 93.9% Clutch Scorer for Aston Villa**

Watkins scored an incredible 15 clutch goals of a total 16 league goals for Villa last season. That is phenomenal for a guy who drifts out wide left to drift back in and score goals. It’s an evergreen tactic that makes Watkins the most consistent scorer in the league from open play, when you pull back all the guff surrounding other people’s numbers.

Only tw0 penalties scored and only one of those two penalties scored came at a “clutch” moment for Villa’s main man up front. People talk about Marc Guehi when mentioning model behaviour this summer, but the fact Watkins kept his head down at Villa is an enigma in itself.

**Aleksander Isak – 65.2% Clutch Scorer for Newcastle**

Alas, no longer a Mag, but Isak scored 15 clutch goals out of 23 PL goals in black and white last season. Four of those were penalties (three pens scored at clutch moments in the game), making Isak a slight penalty merchant for the purposes of social media graphics.

Depending on who you believe, Liverpool have either signed the complete striker… or an injury-prone forward who doesn’t fancy defenders getting tight to him down the middle, and who’s always one game away from his groin exploding. He’s already taken up enough column space this summer for me, so I leave it to you to decide.

**Erling Haaland – 63.6% Clutch scorer for Manchester City**

It is 14 clutch goals out of 23 total, with some light stat padding from two clutch penalties (of three total penalties scored by Haaland in the league). Whether you enjoy watching a physical presence like Haaland or someone who moves across all channels like Isak, their very different styles made for largely the same impact to their respective teams last season.

The penalty merchants

**Bryan Mbeumo – 85% Clutch scorer for Brentford**

Mbeumo would be higher up any pure rankings (17 clutch goals from 20 total) if 20% of his goals didn’t come from the spot. He’s now at Manchester United and, like Mbeumo and his new teammates found out against Grimsby… someone has to step up and take penalties!

It’s a certain kind of pressure from the spot where you can fall flat on your face all the same, so I don’t want to come off like scoring penalties is some kind of outright negative. It isn’t. But if Mbeumo’s not on penalty duty then you’re looking at someone who barely makes the top-tier scorers’ list in any season of his career to date.

**Mohamed Salah – 50% Clutch scorer for Liverpool**

I could call Salah a penalty merchant, I could call Liverpool a side that’s heavily favoured by the refs – Salah scored a whooping nine penalties last season – that’s 25% of his goal tally from 12 yards out – and seven of those penalties scored at clutch moments that change the very nature of the game. Pretty shocking in all honesty.

But Salah’s unfairly done by these rankings since I didn’t account for assists, and that’s where he’d destroy everyone else on this list. You only have to look at Salah’s Matrix-like nutmeg of a West Ham defender in bullet-time, during the buildup to assisting Gakpo at the end of it, to acknowledge Salah is a baller and then some.

The Chris Wood “What-If”

12 clutch goals out of 20 PL goals for Wood at Forest last season, but there’s significant stat padding when Forest were already up. One particular 7-0 drubbing of Brighton (where Wood scored a hat-trick) certainly helped his numbers.

Wood’s form both before and after his Newcastle still raises question marks around the club’s efforts in making the most of Wood on the Tyne. I’m as big of an Eddie Howe loyalist as they come, but you can’t say every signing’s been maximised while conveniently ignoring what Wood showed himself to be everywhere outside the North East. After all, what would Newcastle’s fortunes have looked like had they never bothered signing Isak at all?

Keep Wood and you’d be looking at a Newcastle that was never forced into those “poor decisions” to sell Elliott Anderson, or make Odysseas Vlachodimos the club’s record-most-expensive goalkeeper signing in the club’s history. Ifs, buts and maybes.

On the other hand, you might not win a League Cup with Chris Wood as your main striker.

His goalscoring shows a significant drop-off in clutch rate from the first half of last season to the spring. Wood will justifiably point to events outside of his control (picking up an injury on international duty) as the reason, while Wood’s detractors will say Forest’s main route to goal got “figured out” with the big Kiwi at the helm.

The Future Is Wissa

Newcastle were shopping for impact this summer and, outside of the very unlikely dream of landing Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa, landed on the best signing they could in terms of Yoane Wissa. I could’ve briefly mentioned Nicolas Jackson, who scored a remarkable eight clutch goals out of 10 PL goals scored last season. The Senegalese frontman genuinely made a different at pressure moments in Chelsea’s season, one where the West London outfit ended up finishing above Newcastle in the table.

But Jackson did only score 10 league goals in all, eventually moving to Bayern Munich for a very questionable 15-million-pound loan fee and further obligation to buy for anoher 55 million pounds. Those were numbers simply outside of Newcastle’s ballpark when talking about signing a striker who barely got into double figures, and would be asked to rotate with the considerable talent of Nick Woltemade. So it’s understandable why Newcastle landed on Wissa to do the job.

Newcastle have replaced a 65% clutch scorer (Isak) with a 74% clutch scorer who doesn’t rely on penalties at all. In an ideal world, the Newcastle top management could’ve done this without paying double the fee, after Brentford’s management completely read Newcastle’s summer transfer campaign like an open book. But when you talk about “needs must” signings, Wissa can be relied on to put the ball in the back of the net. Not just often, but also when it counts the most.