Albion Analytics: Lewis Dunk 250

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How our captain has got better and better

Liam Tharme

Albion Analytics

2024-12-02T09:45+00:00

Lewis Dunk made his 250th Premier League appearance for the club against Southampton on Friday. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Entering the field as a 72nd-minute substitute against Southampton on Friday, eight days after his 33rd birthday, club captain Lewis Dunk made his 250th Premier League appearance. Ironically, the previous 249 had come with him in the starting XI.

Hitting that milestone was significant. He’s the first to that many top-flight appearances of any Brighton player, and in a division which has seen over 4,000 players, only 290 have made more appearances — Dunk is ahead of Andy Carroll (248 appearances), Michael Keane (also 248), John Obi Mikel (249) and in touching distance of the likes of Nemanja Matic (251), Yakubu and former Albion forward Bobby Zamora (252). There are only 36 players in the league currently who have made more appearances than Dunk.

Of the 292 players to make 250+ Premier League appearances, Dunk has reached the threshold at an older age than 233 of them. It’s a testament to the longevity of the 33-year-old’s career, having played under four different permanent head coaches in what is his eighth Premier League season, that he has improved under all of them.

He was the most used player by Chris Hughton (180 appearances in all competitions), and by his successor Graham Potter too (110). Roberto De Zerbi, who followed, only gave more appearances to Pascal Gross (85) than Dunk (79).

Lewis Dunk is a player of 'big quality' according to head coach Fabian Hurzeler. 📷 by James Boardman.

His style evolution has mirrored that of Albion under those head coaches. In 2017-18, the club and Dunk’s debut Premier League season, he ranked ninth for clearances (230), fifth for interceptions (71) and second (behind teammate Shane Duffy) for opposition shots blocked (58). Brighton, that season, were a defend-first team, ranking in the bottom-five for possession but they kept ten clean sheets with four of their nine victories by a single goal.

The progression to possession under Potter then strict build-up patterns under De Zerbi meant Dunk had to adapt his game. He took some time to adapt to Premier League level, with nine errors leading to shots in his first three seasons, but has only made five since 2020-21 despite playing in attacking systems which require him to take more risks.

Dunk has played fewer switches of play in almost every Premier League season, dropping from 61 in 2017-18 (his most) to just 16 last campaign (his fewest). The focus has gone from playing long and hitting wingers early to breaking lines, with his pass completion trending upwards in each of his seven full Premier League seasons, from 77.8% in his debut year to 92.1% in 2024-25. Last season, he ranked ninth for pass completion among centre-backs with 1,000+ minutes.

After hitting only 54 progressive passes in 2017-18 (fewer than his number of shots blocked/interceptions, as a reflection of style), he has played over 150 in each of the last two campaigns, and is up at 7.5 per game this season, the highest of his career. “He is captain for a long time now and he is a player of big quality,” said head coach Fabian Hurzeler. “It is very important to see his role and what he gives to the team.”

Since coming into the Premier League in 2017, Albion have only kept three clean sheets in the 30 Premier League games Dunk hasn’t started. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Dunk’s late-career evolution was good enough to make him international quality. He was almost 27 by the time Gareth Southgate gave him his England debut in 2018. Under Southgate, only four players made their debut at an older age (Jack Cork in 2017, Conor Coady in 2020, Patrick Bamford in 2021 and Ivan Toney in 2022) while Phil Jagielka was the only centre-back to play for Southgate at an older age than Dunk (who did so aged 32 in June in the 3-0 win over Bosnia & Herzegovina).

While he’s evolved to be a strong ball player, Dunk’s ability in both boxes has never disappeared. Only once in seven full seasons has his aerial duel win rate dropped below 60% (and then that was 59.1% in 2022-23), while he ranks third for Premier League goals by centre-backs since 2018-19 - he’s scored 15 (11 headers), tied with Fabian Schar, and only behind Gabriel (17) and Virgil van Dijk (19).

Albion have only kept three clean sheets in the 30 Premier League games Dunk hasn’t started, a clean sheet rate (10%) which is almost a third of what they managed since 2018-19 when he does start (27% - 57 clean sheets in 211 games). This season has shown green shoots of Brighton being able to cope without Dunk better, with the emergence of Igor Julio and Jan Paul van Hecke as a pairing, while Hurzeler hasn’t ruled out playing them with Dunk as a trio.

Albion have won twice and drawn another two in the five games that the captain has missed (from the starting XI) this season. In their first 25 Premier League games without him starting, they only won four, drew 12 and lost nine. One day Brighton will have to find the permanent heir to the throne. Dunk is, after all, the second-longest serving player in the league (14 years, 7 months and 1 day, at the time of writing), after Everton’s Seamus Coleman. It’s a glittering career with an impressively late peak.