Big Questions for GW25

What's on our minds going into the twenty-fifth week of the season?

Welcome back to the Overthinking Football Gameweek Preview. It’s Week 25 and it’s a Double Gameweek.

We’ve been hard at work trawling through the upcoming fixtures, consuming player news and looking at our Overthinking Football Projections Model to make sense of what we’re likely to see this weekend.

As ever, in looking at what’s coming up I have questions. This week I’m asking:

• Are Liverpool players locks to finish top of the Gameweek points charts?

• Should we expect fireworks again as Chelsea travel to Man City?

• What are the impacts of Matheus Cunha’s injury?

• What is going on with Jarrod Bowen?

• Is a change of management what Crystal Palace need?

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Are Liverpool players the runaway protagonists of GW25?

It’s pretty rare that we don’t see Liverpool players (forwards in particular) towards the top of the Weekly Projections in a normal Gameweek. Here, with two pretty good matchups in the same Gameweek, they look like cheat-codes. The only thing that stops them from being automatic game-winning options is the chance of rotation. So let’s spend a little time on that.

The first place to discuss is up-front, where Liverpool have had a boost of getting Mo Salah back into training this week. Journalists close to the club are reporting that they’d like to have him involved as early as the Brentford tie. We don’t necessarily see that there’s much incentive to rush him back, given the club have continued to create plenty in his absence, but equally they’ll want to get minutes into his legs. We think the most likely outcome for the first game is a recurrence of the Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Diogo Jota trio. And, given they’ve looked pretty effective when they’ve played together, we’d probably anticipate the same trio being favourites to start at Anfield on Wednesday too. Cody Gakpo is still there but, mercifully for Fantrax, Jurgen Klopp seems to have settled on playing the more explosive forwards. We approve of this call. It isn’t impossible we’ll see Gakpo but imagine that we’d be looking at one start at most. If it comes versus Brentford, you can choose to put him on your streaming radar. If it doesn’t, we wouldn’t recommend the gamble.

Further back, the big question is whether Conor Bradley is back with the squad and in the right frame-of-mind to play. If he is, he presumably slots in for the injured Trent Alexander-Arnold and takes one of the most valuable roles in the league in the process (right back for Klopp’s Liverpool is gold dust). We’re going to assume he is and that, with these two match-ups, he should be considered a favourite to finish in the Top-12 of the week pretty comfortably. So the only place we have real question marks is in the midfield. Who can we trust, if anyone, to get the minutes and the output? In the continued absence of Dominic Szoboszlai, Liverpool have mixed things up a fair amount. We’d expect that to continue. If we were forced to rank, we’d probably place Alexis Mac Allister at the top of the pile, as he’s a good bet to play both games. Curtis Jones would be our next best pick, although we’re already on shakier ground. Our wild card, as ever, remains Harvey Elliott, who was so impactful as a sub last time out, but his chances of playing both games feels small. After that, we’re not overly keen on the others. Sometimes Double Gameweek players are not worth chasing after. And if you gamble and get only 90 minutes of Wataru Endo you’re likely to not be overly impressed with the result.

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

Liverpool vs Luton Town - 7.30pm UK, 2.30pm US kickoff, Wednesday

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How different might City vs Chelsea look at the Etihad?

The last time these two sides met, it was a wild 4-4 affair that we imagine must’ve driven Pep Guardiola wild. It’s incredibly rare that you can accuse his teams of being open and vulnerable to opposition attacks to the degree that they were back in November. By the time Cole Palmer’s penalty hit the net, we’d seen City take the lead, Chelsea take it back once, City take it again, Chelsea even things up, City take a late lead again before conceding a late penalty for the equaliser. We’d be very surprised if it looks much like that at the Etihad.