There is no doubt that Mohamed Salah is enjoying one of the very best individual seasons in Premier League history. With 27 goals and 18 assists, he has the most goals and assists combined of any player in a 38-game season, while that total of assists are seven more than any other player. And yet, he’s not created the most chances in the division – Chelsea’s Cole Palmer has created two more (78) than Salah (76), but has 10 fewer assists, going 15 games without one between 4 December and 9 March – in that timeframe, he created the third-most chances in the league (37) and yet his teammates failed to score. But in an era where players are still judged on their assists, it looked as if Palmer had stopping setting his teammates up, when the opposite was actually true.

But what of others down the years who had unfortunate Premier League seasons?

There’s no other place to start than looking at Stewart Downing’s 2011-12 campaign for Liverpool. He’d scored in his last appearance for Aston Villa on the final day of the previous season against Liverpool, his last shot in a Villa shirt. He then failed to score with any of his 72 shots for Liverpool in 2011-12, which was the most shots by a player without scoring in a Premier League season since… Downing himself in 2008-09 (82) in Middlesbrough’s relegation campaign under Gareth Southgate. Across those two campaigns, Downing had 154 shots, with 39 on target, and never scored a single goal. He hit the woodwork four times in 2011-12, with two coming in the penultimate game of the campaign against Chelsea, when presumably he’d worked out that it just wasn’t going to happen for him. He eventually got his first goal with his 11th shot of the following season, though he only managed three from 51 shots, giving him an overall conversion rate of 2.4% in a Reds shirt.

What made 2011-12 even more spectacularly unlucky for Downing was he also created 56 chances for his teammates and but none of them were converted into goals – that’s a whopping 128 shots and chances created combined without a goal or assist, almost 50 more than any other player in a Premier League season on record. Andy Carroll and the normally potent Luis Suarez were most at fault for not getting Downing onto the assist board – Carroll missed the 13 chances Downing created for him and Suarez missed all 12. It is the most chances created without an assist in a season since 2003-04.

Though Downing takes second and third spot for shots without a goal in a Premier League season on record, he’s some way off that particular number one. It will most certainly not be the abiding memory of Jay Jay Okocha’s time in England, but the skilful Nigerian had an unbelievable total of 137 shots without scoring for Bolton Wanderers in 2003-04, which was exactly 100 more than the next most that season (John Arne Riise on 37). Of those 137 attempts, 118 of them were from outside the box, with only Frank Lampard in 2008-09 (126) having more since then. All of this is made even more bizarre when you factor in that Okocha scored on the final day of the 2002-03 season against Middlesbrough and then scored twice (both from outside the box) on the opening day of 2004-05 against Charlton. But 2003-04 just wasn’t his season.

Only considering players who only ever spent one season in the Premier League, it’s hard to look past José Manuel Jurado’s 27-game stint at Watford in 2015-16. Jurado had made his senior debut for Real Madrid in 2005 but didn’t manage to put up any Galactico numbers during his short time in Hertfordshire, having 35 shots without scoring. As with Downing previously, he could definitely point to his teammates profligacy in front of goal as the reason he didn’t get his name onto the assist chart – with 41 chances created he was the Hornets’ second most creative player that season. He still ended the Premier League campaign with fewer assists than Bersant Celina, who played 13 minutes but still managed one in Man City’s 3-1 defeat to Leicester in February 2016.

Moving to the present day, keep an eye out for Andy Robertson in the last few games of the season; while he’s established himself as the second-most creative defender in Premier League history with 59 assists, none of the 38 chances he’s created this season have been converted, nor has he scored with any of his 12 shots. It’s the most combined without a goal or assist for Liverpool since, you guessed it, Stewart Downing in 2011-12. There’s something in the water on Merseyside as the two players with the most shots without scoring are Everton duo Jesper Lindstrøm (28) and Idrissa Gueye (26). With Lindstrøm out injured for the remainder of the campaign, can Gueye spare his teammates blushes with a few more wayward efforts?

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