If you've been paying attention to the Premier League this season, you've already seen a lot.

You've seen Erling Haaland detonate what is supposed to be the best league in the world. You've seen Mikel Arteta prove the illogic of the managerial merry-go-round. You've seen Liverpool shoot themselves in the foot. You've seen Thomas Tuchel get fired less than two years removed from winning the Champions League. You've seen Manchester United make their first steps, in over a decade, toward establishing any kind of identity.

You've seen Leicester City nearly implode. You've seen AFC Bournemouth lose a game 9-0 and then go six matches undefeated. You've seen the end of the Bruno Lage Era. You've seen plenty of people calling for the end of the Jesse Marsch Era (despite a better-than-average expected-goal differential). You've seen the end of the "Steven Gerrard Will Succeed Jurgen Klopp" fairytale. You've even seen Nottingham Forest sign a small Caribbean nation's entire population worth of players, beat Liverpool and still end up in last place.

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One of the few things you haven't seen: Crossing. While the once-widespread practice of getting the ball wide and whipping it into the box for an on-rushing target man has been on the decline for over a decade, the 2022-23 season might truly be the end of crossing as we knew it.

 

The death of crossing

Back in 2008-09, Manchester United and Chelsea were meeting in the Champions League final. Liverpool were leading the league in goal differential and still not winning it. And Arsenal, captained by a 21-year-old Cesc Fabregas, were passing the ball around at pace and comfortably finishing in fourth place.

This was the Era of the Big Four. Tottenham Hotspur were playing Gareth Bale as a full-back, grinding out an eighth-place finish from 45 goals scored and 45 conceded. Manchester City, meanwhile, were down in 10th, struggling to find consistency during the first year after the Abu Dhabi takeover. In fact, only one of the teams in the bottom half of the league in 2008-09 is still in the league today: Newcastle United, who were relegated with Alan Shearer — yes, that Alan Shearer — managing from the sideline. Also relegated, perhaps foreshadowing what just happened in the UEFA Nations League: Gareth Southgate's Middlesbrough.

The list of managers elsewhere in the league evokes a pure and very specific kind of nostalgia: Phil Brown, Tony Pulis, Martin O'Neill, Roy Hodgson, Gary Megson, Sam Allardyce, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruce, Tony Mowbray. You read off all those names, close your eyes and bask in the memories of that yellow Nike ball getting smashed into the penalty area from wide positions, over and over and over again.

In the 2008-09 Premier League season, the earliest season for which Stats Perform provides, the average team was crossing the ball in open play 17.5 times per match. If you sat down on a given Saturday or Sunday, you were likely to see around 35 crosses attempted between both teams across a 90-minute game. In fact, 21.9% of all final-third passes were crosses back then. Saying that "every fifth pass in the final-third was a cross" would be to undersell how often balls were getting sent into the box.

Fast-forward to this season, and it's almost unrecognizable: Premier League teams are averaging 11.5 open-play crosses per match, and 14.7% of their final-third passes are crosses — both of which are the lowest marks since 2008-09.