Nothing that followed at West Ham last season summed up the Dutchman more accurately than that came. A player whose game is engineered to produce a chance without needing anyone to build one for him.

Which is why Al Hilal have paid an initial £55m, rising to £60m with add-ons to secure his services. The contract runs to June 2030, with the wages reported at up to €17m net a year, and the field they beat included Roma, whose €46m bid was rejected on 20 July, plus enquiries from Manchester United and interest from Aston Villa. 

Only Neymar and Jhon Duran have cost Saudi clubs more. Summerville called the window a "rollercoaster" when the deal was announced at Al Hilal's camp in Austria, and the club's new sporting director Simon Francis made him the priority of the summer.

The purchase makes complete sense when you look at where Al Hilal's title actually went. Simone Inzaghi's side did not lose it through wild swings in form, they went 24 league matches unbeaten, the longest run in the division. They actually ‘drew’ it away if you will (sorry, we had to).

Seven of their first 24 league matches finished level, and Al Nassr, who opened with ten straight wins, never seemed to look back. Al Hilal scored 85 goals to the champions' 91, won the King's Cup, and went out of the Champions League Elite in the round of 16. The pattern of those drawn matches was consistent: a deep block conceding the flanks, Al Hilal circulating in front of it, and nobody willing to lose the ball on purpose. Enter Summerville.

His Sofascore heat map at West Ham runs down the left touchline and into the half-space, peaking at the edge of the box rather than the corner flag, because he receives high and wide and then attacks the area instead of the byline. He is a shot-first winger: 54 league shots, 1.89 per game, and a non-penalty xG of 0.25 per 90 that ranked in the top quarter of Premier League attackers. He is also, and this is the number Al Hilal's data department will have circled, a finisher who ran behind his locations. Five league goals against just under seven non-penalty expected goals, with only 15 of those 54 shots on target, in a relegated side facing top-flight goalkeepers. Move those identical shot locations into the Saudi Pro League and the conversion rate should head upward. 

Summerville’s touches run down the left touchline and turn inside. The density sits in the half-space at the top of the area — a shot-first winger’s map, not a crosser’s.

The second number worth circling is 67. That is how many fouls Summerville won in the Premier League last season, third in the entire division behind Elliot Anderson and Bruno Guimaraes, both central midfielders. For a wide player in a relegated team it is a remarkable figure, and against Saudi Pro League blocks it becomes a weapon in its own right. Every failed take-on that draws contact is a Ruben Neves delivery from 25 yards or a marker booked before the hour. His take-on success rate sat around 47 per cent on heavy volume, and his duel record just above even, which sounds ordinary until you price in the failure states. A winger who comes out even in duels but wins a foul every 25 minutes is not breaking even at all.

What he is not, and Al Hilal should be clear-eyed about this, is a creator. Around one key pass per 90 and a handful of big chances created across the season is thin, and it is the genuine gap in his game. This matters because the man whose flank he inherits, Salem Al-Dawsari, now 34, is his functional opposite: a combiner who links with the eight and the full back and produces through relationships. Summerville produces through isolation. The succession is positional, not stylistic, and Inzaghi's structure has to change accordingly. The supply line is no longer a give-and-go on the left; it should be the Neves diagonal arriving at the touchline with Karim Benzema  and Marcos Leonardo already loading the box, so that by the time Summerville squares up his man, the defence has two problems and one defender assigned to the first of them.

Another factor to consider is that Frenchman Theo Hernandez should be the multiplier here. And it’s basically the opposite of his role at Milan. There, Rafael Leao held the touchline and Theo underlapped. Here, Summerville will occupy the inside-left channel between right back and right centre back, and Theo takes the touchline lane on the overlap, in a back four, or as the wing-back beneath him if Inzaghi returns to the 3-5-2 he trusts in big matches. 

The caveat is rest defence. Both are transition-first players, and pairing them commits Al Hilal's counterpressing structure to the right side and the pivot. Inzaghi solved a version of this problem at Inter with Dimarco and Bastoni; solving it at Kingdom Arena is what he is paid for.

But it’s the individual matchups are where the fee tends to get audited. Sultan Al-Ghannam at Al Nassr is the league's most disciplined right back, and his method is orthodox: show the winger down the line, protect the inside lane, trust the cover. Summerville's outside move onto his left foot for the cutback attacks precisely what Al-Ghannam concedes, and if Al Nassr respond by switching Mohamed Simakan across for the pace matchup, the dislocation to their build-up structure is a big win even before kick-off. 

Ali Majrashi at Al-Ahli is the opposite case: 1.69m, front-footed, and aggressive enough to have been sent off in April's Champions League Elite quarter-final. Majrashi jumps at touchline receptions, and Summerville's first touch is designed to take the ball infield off exactly that jump. Given his fouls-won record, Majrashi defending him on a yellow card by the hour mark is close to a base case. At Al-Ittihad, Muhannad Shanqeeti is promising but green against elite one-v-one wingers, and the zone behind him belongs to an ageing Fabinho in transition. None of these will make for comfortable evenings.

The first assignment is promoted Al Faisaly at Kingdom Arena on 13 August, which will mean a deep block from the opening whistle and a defence conceding the exact zones Summerville was bought to occupy. Seven draws cost Al Hilal the title last season. This signing will be priced against each one of them.