Big Questions for GW10

What's on our minds going into the tenth week of the season?

Hello again. We’ve reached the double figure Gameweeks as the season continues to run away at incredible pace. There was no Roundup article this week as I spent most of the weekend out trekking in a mangrove forest, attempting to avoid being mugged by wild monkeys, but we’re back on our regular form again this week.

As a quick point of admin, this week is a clock-change weekend in the UK, so keep an eye on fixture timings if you’re in another time-zone. Don’t get caught missing out on team news or your start / sit decisions by an hour.

But back to the football: as ever I have questions. This week I’m asking:

• Which Chelsea player is rapidly becoming their number one Fantrax asset?

• Will Mikel Arteta ever rotate his star players?

• What is going on with Douglas Luiz’s home / away splits?

• Can a European hangover provide any hope for Wolves this weekend?

• Will the Derby be the catalyst for Erik Ten Hag’s United side turning their form around?

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Has a new number one player to roster emerged at Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea?

As the 24th senior signing of the Todd Boehly era at Chelsea and with a total of three previous Premier League starts, Cole Palmer was hardly the player most would’ve been eager to get for this new-look side. His transfer fee of £45m seemed a huge outlay for a relatively unproven squad player in a position where Chelsea did not look at all short of bodies. And yet, four starts into his Chelsea career, we’re now looking at the man with the highest xFpts score (13.96) amongst all healthy Chelsea players. In fact, over his small recent sample, Palmer is sat in 6th in combined xG+xAG in the entire league, ahead of names like Bukayo Saka, Son Heung-Min and Bruno Fernandes. This is a number heavily boosted by penalty duty (though those three names are also penalty takers) but having sole responsibility for penalty duty at Chelsea is a valuable role. And it’s not like he’s a scrub in open play, still offering 0.47 npxG+xA / 90 alongside those numbers.

The big risk with Palmer was (and still is) that Chelsea have a huge squad, with competition in his position. But their recent uptick in results correlates with two things. Firstly, Palmer’s run of starts. Secondly, adding ‘Infinite Athlete’ as a sponsor. We’re not willing to give any credit to the might-be-real, might-not-be-real sponsor. But we’re a little warmer on Palmer. At this point, the only remaining risk to his value other than injury would be the potential for Christopher Nkunku to be on penalty duty when he returns. But his return may not be until January anyway. If you can get another two to three months of Palmer producing at this level, there should be no complaints. This weekend is a fine matchup as he faces Brentford in the weekend’s opening fixture. Looking beyond it, Chelsea’s fixture run is tough but he’s appeared fairly matchup proof anyway, performing against Fulham, Burnley and Arsenal in the league and getting an assist for the winner against Brighton in the Carabao Cup.

If there’s any manager in your league who rosters him but who isn’t alive to Palmer’s longer-term value, there is probably not a huge window remaining to buy him. But we’d probably still give it a go. The sky really does seem to be the limit for the young man.

Chelsea vs Brentford - 12.30pm UK, 7.30am US kickoff, Saturday

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Is fixture congestion getting to Arsenal and will Arteta rotate?

By most reasonable measures, Arsenal once again look a team who are challenging for a title this year. Yes, things have looked a bit more sluggish in the build-up this year. Yes, a few bounces haven’t gone their way. But through 9 games, they’re kept pace with Manchester City, which is what you need to be able to do if you want to compete for a title these days. They’re also doing this whilst back in the Champions League. So far, so dream-like for Arsenal fans who will remember all too well that it wasn’t long ago that they were scrapping to consolidate Europa League table positions. But despite the optimism, over the last few weeks, they have started to collect slightly troubling small-injuries to key names in a way that suggests that Mikel Arteta’s policy of sticking to his star names relentlessly could be starting to catch up with the squad.