Welcome back to the Overthinking Football Gameweek Preview. It’s Week 26 and after the bumper minutes of GW25, we’re into blank territory.
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:
Can Newcastle slow down Arsenal’s red-hot (in the Premier League at least) attack?
How high should we be on Simon Adingra?
Is this a breakout for Rasmus Hojlund?
Are Nottingham Forest starting to click at the right time?
How hot is David Moyes’ chair?
Is there any hope that Newcastle break out of their slump?
Comparing the Newcastle of 2022/23 and 2023/24, one very clear thing stands out. This year’s side does not defend well. At all. You might think I’m exaggerating. But comparing the statistics underpinning Newcastle this year and last, we can see that their level of attacking production has been fairly consistent. They were the 4th best side in the Premier League last season in terms of Expected Goals For (xG) in 22/23. They currently sit in exactly the same spot in 23/24. We’d actually say that’s pretty impressive, given the sheer number of injuries that they’ve had, particularly amongst their attackers. But it’s when we compare to last season’s clear strength (defending) that we see something pretty wild. Last season, Newcastle were the 2nd best team in terms of Expected Goals Against (xGA), ahead of title-challenging Arsenal. Teams struggled to run up good chances on Newcastle last year. They are currently sitting in 17th this year. Behind Burnley. That’s not just a slight drop-off. That’s a drop that might give Felix Baumgartner pause for thought.
And, as we talked about in a previous post, the wild thing with it is that the defensive players are near-enough the same. Dan Burn and Sven Botman did miss time this season. But they were actually trending pretty well on xGA early in the year. It’s since November time, when they’ve had most of the defence healthy (though did lose Nick Pope), that the wheels have truly come off on this Newcastle side. The big challenge as we see it is that the defence is just not getting enough protection from the midfield. And that’s maybe understandable. Bruno Guimaraes is an excellent footballer, but he’s currently being asked to do a lot alongside Sean Longstaff and Lewis Miley. And they’re too often exposed at the back. We do like Miley, in case this reads like a hit-piece. Getting any production out of a CM in the Premier League at 17 years-old is incredible and bodes very well for his future. But we’d imagine this is very much not how Newcastle would’ve pictured their season going coming into it. Rumour has it that Joe Willock is close to a return and he might help a little. But the balance looks very off at the moment.
They’ve got to head to the Emirates on Saturday night and if they can’t find a way to protect their defence better there, there’s a real risk that we could see another game like their New Year’s Day trip to Liverpool. So it’s over to Eddie Howe to work out how to slow down Martin Odegaard and crew. Porto managed it in midweek. I’m still probably fading every non-Kieran Trippier Newcastle defender though.
Arsenal vs Newcastle United - 8.00pm UK, 3.00pm US kickoff, Saturday
Is Simon Adingra the must-have attacker for Brighton the rest of the way?
Simon Adingra was a Community-Sleeper coming into the year. And by that we mean that he was likely undrafted by anyone who wasn’t plugged in to Fantasy circles or Brighton fans. And even amongst members of the Fantrax Community online, he wasn’t a consensus pick. A lot of that had to do with uncertainty around Brighton (the complete retooling of the midfield) and the competition (entering the season behind Solly March and Julio Enciso at a minimum). It was his teammate Enciso, not Adingra, that we tipped as the Breakout for Brighton this year (and even then, we were cautious about whether March would cede his place in the side). But as we hit the end-of-February and the two-third mark of the season, he sits pretty comfortably as the fourth-best Brighton player on overall Fantrax points (having only started 14 Games). He does sit a little lower when using xFpts (but that includes players like Enciso and Ansu Fati ahead of him, both of whom have tiny sample sizes). So it’s reasonable to ask the question: is he the man to trust down-the-stretch from Brighton?
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