Sarah Ewens is actually considered as one of the FA Women’s Championship’s 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 Women’s 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 Women’s 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.
In addition to her excellent physical abilities, Ewens is also a very agile striker who knows how to deal well with complicated crosses and “air games”. She is outstanding in terms of volleys and half-volleys and usually coordinates her body perfectly and with the right timing in order to always be dangerous in such situations.
The next example showcases Ewens’ capacities in the air since this is a goal action that starts with an accurate cross from the right wing and ends with a very beautiful finish from Ewens. She executed a difficult acrobatic move before the ball hits the ground in order to score the goal.
This volley decision was made to anticipate the defender’s movement to clear the ball and if Ewens decided to wait for the ball to reach her, this goal wouldn’t have taken place at all because the defender was having the advantage as she was closer to the ball. This creative goalscoring decision-making and the fact that Ewens has the ability to execute her decisions in an agile and well-timed fashion makes her a very special striker who has what it takes to succeed in FAWSL if she remains consistent in her level of performance.
Ewens is also very good in terms of headers and has already scored many of them from different situations. She is a tall player and has the techniques needed to orient the ball in the direction she wants, as you can see below. Nevertheless, she will have to get used to doing this while always being strictly marked by opponents since that’s what she will encounter when playing in the FAWSL, unlike in the Championship where she is not always marked tightly and where she can escape from defenders’ marking in a slightly easier way.
Comparison with Sam Kerr and Rachel Daly
One way to compare Ewens and Kerr and Daly is to rely on these players’ pizza maps. As we have explored above, Ewens’ pizza map shows that she is good in terms of shooting on goal per 90. However, it also clarifies that her expected goal contribution per match is higher than her actual goal contribution, which is not the case for both Kerr and Daly. Working on improving her goal contribution stats would therefore help her reach the level of Kerr and Daly since these two strikers have the best numbers in the league so far.
The fact that Ewens touches the ball a lot inside the box per match is also a helping factor that means that Ewens can become a more clinical finisher and more importantly, she can contribute more in providing assists to her teammates inside the box. Her accurate passing and dangerous passes rates are not as high as Daly’s but at the same time, she has a way better accurate passing rate than that of Kerr.
At the same time, a lot of work is needed from Ewens to match Kerr and especially Daly’s positioning and aerial duels averages. But overall, Ewens is capable of reaching the levels of both Kerr and Daly.
Comparison with Alessia Russo, Stina Blackstenius and Beth England
It is true that Ewens hasn’t reached the level of Chelsea’s Kerr and Aston Villa’s Daly yet. However, she is getting a bit closer to the levels of players like Manchester United’s Alessia Russo, Arsenal’s Stina Blackstenius and Tottenham Hotspur’s Beth England in some aspects and is actually better than them in some others. For instance, Ewens resembles these three players in terms of goal contribution rates since the four of them have higher expected goal contribution rates than their actual goal contribution rates. At the same time, Ewens has got a better passing accuracy rate than both Russo and Blackstenius and this means that Ewens can exploit this quality and use it by trying to provide key passes more frequently.
Ewens will have to work a little bit more on her dribbling techniques and abilities since her rates are not good enough in this regard especially if we compare them to Russo’s rates who is outstanding in terms of dribbling rates. When assessing positioning and aerial duels rates, what is striking is that these rates vary among the four players: Russo is excellent in terms of positioning and below average in aerial duels, Blackstenius is the contrary of Russo, England is poor in terms of positioning and good in aerial duels while Ewens is below average in both. That’s why Ewens will have to work on enhancing one of these two characteristics in order to become a better forward.
Conclusion
Sarah Ewens is actually one of the best strikers in the FA Women’s Championship and if she keeps playing with the same attacking efficiency, she will surely be able to guide London City Lionesses to the FAWSL by the end of this season.
At the same, she has the potential to match and surpass the level of the actual best FAWSL forwards by improving her stats and working on small details that matter a lot in the game in addition to always improving her goal contribution rates mainly, as this analysis has shown.
