Which Premier League side has the best-value front line?

Bryan Mbeumo had already scored twice when he threaded a pass for Keane Lewis-Potter to score Brentford’s fourth in their 5-0 win over Southampton on Saturday. It was Mbeumo’s 100th league goal contribution in Brentford colours.

The Cameroon international joined Brentford from Troyes in France for just £5.8million ($7.25m) in August 2019 — a club-record fee at a time when Brentford were still in the Championship.

His signing merited barely a mention, overshadowed that summer by the £80million signing of Harry Maguire by Manchester United. Even at his new club, the biggest story of the day was Neal Maupay’s departure to Brighton & Hove Albion.

Since then, Mbeumo has developed into one of the best-value signings in the Premier League. This season, he has already managed 13 goals (three of them from the penalty spot), with three assists, and is the joint-third top scorer in the division.

Over the last five and a half years, each of his 100 league goals and assists has cost Brentford just £58,000 in terms of transfer fee.

But Mbeumo is not alone in providing such good value. Fellow Brentford forward Yoane Wissa, who joined from Ligue 1 side Lorient for £8.5million in August 2021, is only just behind him with 10 goals and three assists this season. He also scored and assisted against Southampton.

In part, the success of the two forwards has been driven by Brentford’s ability to work high-quality shots — across their three and a half seasons in the Premier League, Brentford’s average shot distance of 14.6 metres is the lowest, leading to a conversion rate of almost 18 per cent.

But Brentford have to find the players to manufacture these positions. Their strength in recruitment meant they were able to lose Ivan Toney this summer — himself an amazingly good-value signing — and improve, despite his presumptive replacement, Igor Thiago, largely being out with a knee injury.

Without Toney or injured Igor Thiago, their first-choice front line has been Mbeumo, Wissa and Kevin Schade, who have combined for 35 goals and assists in the Premier League this season. Only Liverpool’s front three has more.

This certainly raises the question: is Brentford’s front line the best value in the Premier League?

Calculating this objectively is slightly difficult and comes with caveats — considering this data illustrative for discussion, rather than PhD level.

When defining starting front lines, The Athletic used the three forwards (strikers and wingers count, attacking midfielders do not) who have made the most starts for their club in the league this season.

The eagle-eyed will note that this does not necessarily mean they have played together as a trio, but it does provide a picture of which players are most relied upon, and overcomes the difficulties of managers who continually rotate or tinker with their systems.

One frustration is that this does not account for injuries — clearly, it is not good value to spend £50million on a regularly injured striker — but, in practice, teams’ first-choice players have generally not missed enough time this season to bump themselves out of their clubs’ most-used forwards.

The table below examines how much each Premier League club has paid in transfer fees for every goal and assist from their most-played forward line this season. While wages will also invariably contribute to the cost to clubs, publicly-accessible payrolls are inaccurate, plus, with wages broadly correlative with transfer fees, it is unlikely to significantly distort the data.

Running away at the top of the table are Leicester City — chiefly because of the phenomenon known as the Jamie Vardy Outlier Effect. Costing just £1million from Fleetwood Town in 2012, he has nine goals and assists this season. He turns 38 on Saturday.

But the rest of Leicester’s most-played forward line was cheap as well: Facundo Buonanotte was the only on-loan player who qualified for inclusion, while Stephy Mavididi cost only £7million. As a unit, each goal contribution this year has cost just £380,000 in transfer fees.

However, it is fair to ask whether they can truly be considered ‘good value’, given Leicester are mired in 19th and appear on course for relegation.

For example, if a confused team were to sign a group of cheap EFL journeymen for paltry fees, who mustered a single goal between them, they should not be considered ‘best value’ if they failed to score the goals to keep their club up, regardless of their cost per goal contribution.

Dive into the numbers though, and Leicester’s front three are not responsible for their club’s problems. Leicester are on course to score 43 goals this year — the average of teams finishing in 17th over the past five seasons has been 39.8 goals. Vardy, Mavididi and Buonanotte are responsible for 21 goals and assists between them, tied for 11th in the league among first-choice forwards, despite being comfortably the league’s cheapest unit.

For comparison, Southampton, Ipswich Town and Everton are all on course for fewer than 39.8 goals this season — though a word for the excellent value Liam Delap, where a £15million investment has supplied 40 per cent of Ipswich’s goal total.

Behind Leicester come Brentford, led by Mbeumo and Wissa. Each of their front line’s goals and assists this season has cost just over £1million.

Kevin Schade, the third member of the trio, has a £22million transfer fee to live up to and has had an encouraging season after injury troubles in 2023-24, getting seven goals and assists from far fewer minutes than his forward line colleagues, as well as being heavily involved in the club’s attacking sequences.

Brentford are the epitome of an apparent sweet spot of clubs who have spent a combined £27million-£37m on their first-choice front line.

Fulham, Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest all fall into this category of having affordable forwards racking up goal contributions at a steady rate.

Forest’s Chris Wood is the prime example here — an irony, given criticism of the fee paid for him — while Fulham’s Raul Jimenez has quietly managed eight goals in his best season since surviving a serious skull fracture in 2020.

That Forest are third and Fulham ninth, while Brighton are still on track for a top-half finish, demonstrates the value in forward output outstripping their price.

At the other end of the list, Chelsea are low down due to the high amount paid for their most-used forwards, equalling just under £5million per goal contribution. Nicolas Jackson, Noni Madueke and Pedro Neto have all enjoyed decent seasons under Enzo Maresca, but their combined price of over £110m means they would have to be spectacular to move higher in the list.

On the topic of spectacular, another reason Chelsea are so low is that Cole Palmer, their primary provider of goals and assists, counts as an attacking midfielder under our definition, rather than a forward. If, hypothetically, his numbers were included instead of Neto, Chelsea’s cost per goal contribution would be almost half (to £2.82m), moving them from 19th to 11th in the list.

It is more difficult to do these gymnastics with Manchester United, with the numbers not becoming significantly rosier even if Bruno Fernandes were to be included. Part of Erik ten Hag’s failure was overspending in recruitment without delivering output.

Marcus Rashford is an academy graduate who should represent value for money for Manchester United’s front three, but Rasmus Hojlund (£64million) has managed just two goals and no assists this season. Amad (£37m) has broken through, but their combined expense means the club has the worst-value front line in this season’s Premier League.

Manchester United fans might argue this is unfair; that the value of signings such as Hojlund and Diallo is better judged in a few years when their output can be judged across multiple seasons. Similarly, others would point out that the value of Premier League stalwarts such as Mohamed Salah and Son Heung-min should be judged by more than just 2024-25.

They would both be right, which is why we made a second table — showing the amount paid per goal contribution across the entirety of these players’ time at their club.

Yet again, the Jamie Vardy Outlier Effect (180 goals over 12 years) means that Leicester City win this comfortably, paying a minuscule £30,000 per goal contribution. Wissa and Mbeumo’s longevity at Brentford, where they have spent a combined nine seasons, means they remain high on the value chart, with a goal contribution cost of just £230,000.

Among elite clubs, we can see the worth offered by players such as Salah and Erling Haaland. Despite hefty transfer fees, their success means their clubs have paid a very low total per goal contribution — particularly in Salah’s case (173 goals after costing an initial £37million). His penalty against Manchester United on Sunday tipped Liverpool’s price per goal contribution just below Manchester City’s.

City, as an aside, are a difficult team to quantify, with their forwards often rotating between starting in attacking midfield or on the wing. Players in this mould (Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden) have made more starts in total across both positions than conventional wingers (Savinho, Jack Grealish, and Jeremy Doku), so have been included.

West Ham United are an interesting case study. The club has become known for spending money on unsuccessful and expensive strikers — see Gianluca Scamacca, Sebastien Haller, and possibly, in time, Niclas Fullkrug — but this underscores the historic importance of Michail Antonio, who suffered serious injuries in a car crash last month and whose future career is uncertain.

Signed for just £7million in 2015, Antonio’s 68 goals have been reliable when intended replacements have fallen short; he is still amongst West Ham’s three most-used forwards this season.

Jarrod Bowen’s output since joining from Hull City, alongside Mohammed Kudus’ end product, means their starting front line has historically been good value — even if they would fare much worse if all forward signings were taken into account.

In general, the second chart is predominantly useful for showing which clubs have found good-value solutions in the long term, rather than being used as a marker for which teams recruit best overall. This is because it discriminates against new signings who have already become first choice for their clubs — it is why Bournemouth, Fulham and Wolves are so low, despite decent attacking numbers from their front-line trios.

In Chelsea’s case, Jackson, Madueke and Neto have all been at the club for less than two years — they simply have not had the time to assert their long-term value. If all three remain at the club for five years, their signings will be justified.

It is a similar story at Newcastle — whose front three of Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon and Jacob Murphy are the most expensive group on this list at a combined £115million. Yet all three have been good value in practice: Isak has established himself as one of the Premier League’s elite strikers, Gordon has 31 goals and assists in just two years, while Murphy was signed eight years ago from Norwich City for just £8million yet is still in Eddie Howe’s starting XI.

GO DEEPER

Alexander Isak – king of the six-yard box

If Gordon and Isak remain productive at the club — or even if one of the pair departs for an even greater transfer fee than Newcastle paid — they will represent excellent value. The initial expense just means it will take time.

So what can be learned from this exercise? Here are three takeaways.

At the risk of sounding like an insurance salesperson, the root of success for this season’s successful upper-middle-class sides has been in finding affordable scoring solutions.

The most significant factor in recouping value is longevity at a club, rather than short-term scoring bursts, unless that player is sold on for a profit.

And finally — excluding free transfers, players signed on a flier as teenage prospects and the Jamie Vardy Outlier Effect — Bryan Mbeumo has proven himself to be the best-value forward in the league.

GO DEEPER

The Briefing: How does this end? Amorim’s best XI? Is 1-0 to the Arsenal a problem?

(Top photo: Leicester’s Jamie Vardy and Facundo Buonanotte; by Dan Istitene via Getty Images))