Exploring Sarah Ewens’s goalscoring abilities and seeing how she compares to the FAWSL’s successful strikers – scout report

Sarah Ewens is actually considered as one of the FA Womens Championships best and most impactful strikers since she has helped her actual team London City Lionesses be at the top of the league until now if the team succeeds in being promoted to the FAWSL, some of the credit will surely go to Ewens thanks mainly to her excellent goalscoring contribution.

Ewens started her footballing journey at Spartans in 2011 before joining Hibernian and then moving to Celtic to play until 2021 in the Scottish Womens Premier League. Her excellent performances with Celtic attracted some English teams and she ended up being transferred to Birmingham City for the 2021/22 season. And since joining London City Lionesses in 2022, Ewens appears to have finally found her best run of form and is actually doing very well in the FA Womens Championship in terms of performances.

In order to have a better understanding of Ewens’ value and worth, we opted for not just a tactical analysis scout report but also for comparing Ewens’ numbers to those of some of the FAWSL’s most in-form strikers at the moment to assess Ewens’ strengths and weaknesses and explore what she needs to improve in order to be able to excel in the FAWSL in the upcoming years.

Goalscoring abilities

Ewens has been outstanding during this season in terms of goalscoring since she helped her team score many crucial goals to win the necessary number of points to be at the top of the league. In fact, Ewens is able to alternate her goalscoring methods and adapt to various situations using her shooting techniques and relying on her strong physical abilities to get rid of marking and disturbance inside the box.

As the pizza map below shows, Ewens touches the ball a lot inside the box and shoots a lot too. And although she’ll need to improve her goal contribution statistics, it is fair to say that Ewens is a very good finisher who is able to exploit half chances. All that is needed from her is to remain consistent and therefore improve her goal contribution statistics even further.

Ewens’s goalscoring skills can be considered her best trait since this is what she masters the most in football. She mainly uses her great physical abilities to win in offensive duels, protect the ball and be able to resist the ever-present defenders’ pressure and disturbance inside the box. In the following example, Ewens receives the ball with her back towards the goal and succeeds in turning and dribbling quickly past her marker which keeps disturbing her using her hands.

But Ewens covers the ball using her left shoulder to block the movement of the defender while keeping the ball at her right. While in this disturbing situation, Ewens finds the effort and the ability to shoot from outside the box and succeeds in lobbing the ball over the goalkeeper too. And this not only highlights her great physical strength but also her exploitation of half-chances and her sense of the goal. These traits are fundamental for London City Lionesses’ tactics.