ArticlesAnalysis
What if the winger we need is already in the MLS?
August 6, 2026
Maybe the winger we need isn't a sexy star from abroad, but someone we can poach from the MLS. Gabriel Pec took 39 shots in 14 appearances and then went to Cruzeiro, and nobody has picked up the slack. Our season expected goals figure of 1.53 a match describes a forward line that doesn't exist any more. The three games after he left produced 1.28, 0.98 and 1.00, and that's the number that actually describes us now.
The strange part is that it isn't a chance-location problem. We put 71.2% of our shots inside the box against a league average of 66.6, and our chance quality per shot sits a fraction above league average across the season. We get into the right areas. Against Dallas we had eighteen shots, fourteen of them from inside the box, and the whole lot came to 1.16 expected goals, about half what an average attempt is worth. Right postcode, wrong decision, over and over again.
So the hole isn't "a winger" in the abstract. Kyogo's twenty-three minutes against Dallas made it clearer than any number has. He spent them running in behind, sitting on the shoulder of the centre-backs and attacking the channels, and I hadn't seen a Galaxy forward do that since Joveljić. Nascimento and Klauss both wanted it to feet. What we're short of is someone who stretches the last line and then finishes what he gets, because the volume is already there and we keep wasting it.
How I went looking
Every wide attacker in MLS with at least 900 minutes this season, thirty or under, ranked on what they produce per ninety rather than what their season total happens to say. Anyone already at the club taken out, for obvious reasons.
One number does most of the work below, and it's the crudest one available: goals as a share of shots taken. Across this group it runs at 21%. Anyone a long way above that on modest volume is finishing hot, and finishing hot stops. It's a poor substitute for expected goals at player level, which I don't have, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend the shortlist is more scientific than it is.
The five
Anders Dreyer€15.0m
27 · San Diego
The best fit here and it isn't close. He takes 2.21 shots and plays 2.61 key passes per ninety, which is the most balanced attacking involvement of anyone on the list, and he's done it across 1,586 minutes, the biggest sample of the lot, so it's the least likely to be a purple patch. He converts at 18%, below the group rate, which means seven goals and seven assists is roughly what he's worth rather than a number waiting to fall over. He completes 62% of his dribbles, the best of anyone attempting them in volume. He's 27, which is the right side of a DP contract.
Guilherme€2.5m
30 · Houston
The highest raw output on the list at 0.94 goals and assists per ninety, the best rating at 7.98, and 4.82 dribbles a game at 58% success, which is comfortably the most carrying of anyone with real end product. If the problem is that nobody stretches a defence, he is the most direct answer to it available. Two things hold me back. He's converting at 29.4%, well above the group, so some of those ten goals are borrowed. And he's 30, which for a DP slot means no resale and a contract you can't move. That's the classic way an MLS club wastes the mechanism it has least of.
Kevin Velde€5.0m
26 · Portland
The value pick, and the one I'd actually push for. Four goals and four assists reads as ordinary until you notice he's converting at 12.9%, well under the group rate, while attempting 4.06 dribbles a game. High carrying volume with output currently lagging the involvement is the shape of a player whose numbers should improve rather than regress. Right age, and he'd cost less than the two above precisely because the headline figures don't jump out.
Marcel Hartel€4.5m
29 · St. Louis
The most involved attacking player in the whole sample, and by a distance. He takes 2.96 shots and plays 2.96 key passes per ninety, so he's an equal threat to score and to set one up. He's converting at 13%, which means if anything he's underperforming his own volume. The reason he's fourth rather than first is 1.35 dribbles a game. He's a volume creator, not a line-stretcher. He'd make us better and he wouldn't fix the thing I've just spent three paragraphs describing.
Zac Gozo€6.0m
18 · Real Salt Lake · not as a DP
Six goals and four assists in 1,433 minutes at eighteen, with 4.08 dribbles a game and a sustainable 15.4% conversion. He's here to make the opposite point: at eighteen he's a U22 Initiative signing, which is a different roster mechanism and a fraction of the money. Spending DP money on him would be a category error. Spending U22 money on him looks like the best idea on this page.
The ones the numbers are lying about
Tyler Baribo and Kévin Denkey are both converting at 37.9%. Eleven goals apiece on roughly two shots a game. That is the loudest "this will not hold" signal in the entire dataset, and it's the same pattern I wrote about Dallas before we played them. They'd scored 6.9 goals above what their chances warranted, and then they came to our place and didn't score at all.
Diego Martínez is converting at 33.3%, he's nineteen, and he plays for LAFC. The number won't hold and they wouldn't sell him to us if it would.
What this can't tell you
No salary data, so none of this is a value judgement. It's a performance shortlist. Dreyer topping it means he's the best fit for the profile, not that he's the best deal. In a league where the roster rules matter more than the transfer fee, that gap is not small. Who's DP-eligible, who's affordable and who is actually gettable is a different piece, and probably one that needs someone with better sources than a spreadsheet. Market values in the headlines are Transfermarkt estimates.
There's also no expected goals at player level in what I'm working from, so conversion rate is standing in for finishing luck. That's a blunt instrument. A genuinely elite finisher looks exactly like a regression candidate here, and I have no way to separate the two.
What I'd say with some confidence: we don't need another forward who wants it to feet, we have those. We need someone who runs, and there are at least three in this league doing it well enough to be worth a phone call.