Julio Enciso is reviving the shoot-first midfielder Ipswich needed
Ipswich's Paraguayan forward is unusually willing to shoot and dribble at pace, and his equaliser against Hull showed exactly why Gary O'Neil built his attack around him.
Julio Enciso scored Ipswich's equaliser in a 2-2 draw at Hull on Saturday, Press Association reported for the Guardian Premier League. The result left Hull's unbeaten home record intact but stretched their winless run to eight games.
Hull had taken the lead in the 22nd minute through Florentino Luis, who sliced through unhindered on the right after Ipswich had dominated possession without making it count. Enciso's response was the moment that defined the game.
What makes Enciso worth watching closely is not just that he scored, but how little regard he has for the modern instinct to pass sideways when a shot is on. Planet Football's Sam Cooper made that case in his analysis of the forward, and the data on his shot volume backs it up.
A shot-taker in an age of recycled possession
Enciso has attempted 22 shots this season, second in the Premier League behind only Erling Haaland — a striking number for a player operating from the final third rather than as the focal striker.
The contrast with Jeremy Doku illustrates the point. Doku leads the league for completed dribbles but has managed only 10 shots, while Enciso sits seventh for dribbles completed yet attempts shots at more than double the rate. The pattern suggests a player whose carries are built with a shot as the intended outcome, not an open team-mate.
That matters tactically. A forward who dribbles to create a shooting angle behaves differently to one who dribbles to draw defenders and release a pass. Enciso's game is built on the first instinct, which is increasingly rare among Premier League number 10s coached to value the extra pass over the low-percentage strike.
The Hull goal as a case study in his toolkit
The equaliser itself carried several of his traits in sequence. Enciso was caught by Oli McBurnie's challenge from behind but stayed on his feet and immediately skinned Tim Iroegbunam.
That left him one-on-one with Nobel Mendy on the edge of the box. Mendy tried to show him onto his weaker left side, a sound defensive instinct against a right-footed player, but Enciso sold him a feint to the right before cutting left, shifting Mendy's momentum the wrong way and buying the half-yard he needed.
He then took an extra touch specifically to stay clear of a sliding challenge before finishing with his left foot into the top corner past Konstantinos Tzolakis. Each element — absorbing the foul, the change of direction against an isolated defender, the composure to take one more touch before shooting — is the kind of one-on-one execution that rewards a club for building attacking patterns around an individual rather than a system.
Ipswich's data this season supports the idea that Enciso's value extends beyond end product. He has won possession in the final third more than any other Ipswich player, which points to a willingness to engage physically and press high rather than simply drift into space, despite being a 22-year-old operating away from his homeland for the first time in this kind of physical league.
Why O'Neil's Strasbourg blueprint travelled with him
Enciso's first spell at Portman Road, a loan in the 2023-24 season, gave little indication of what was to come. He managed two goals in 13 appearances, one of them a long-range strike, but looked short of the confidence needed to impose himself in the Premier League.
From there he moved to Strasbourg, where Gary O'Neil was manager, before Ipswich brought him back permanently in the summer for a fee of £26m with O'Neil now in charge at Portman Road. The pairing has proved decisive: O'Neil had already built his Strasbourg side to funnel play through Enciso, a system that produced nine goals from him in the second half of last season.
That same approach has been transplanted to Ipswich, addressing a problem from their previous Premier League campaign, when only Liam Delap offered consistent goals and Sammie Szmodics finished second on the scoresheet with just four. Enciso is already roughly halfway to that total this season, having been described as the best Paraguayan talent produced in three decades and built into the national team's attack in the same central, shot-first role O'Neil now gives him at club level.
Ipswich's challenge from here is less about finding another route to goal and more about sustaining the one they already have. A team whose top threat thrives on individual duels and shooting volume needs the rest of its structure to keep creating those one-on-one moments, something Saturday's draw at Hull suggested they can still manufacture even when their overall final-third efficiency falls short.