Welcome back to the Overthinking Football Gameweek Preview. It’s Week 27.
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:
What are the implications of Liverpool’s ongoing injury crisis?
How do Brighton make up for the lack of Kaoru Mitoma?
Erik’s not scared, are we?
Is there any reason to still trust Chelsea?
What might the formation switch mean for Eberechi Eze?
The kids are clearly alright at Liverpool, but will the big-hitters be back?
The vibes at Liverpool have variable at times this year, but they’ve never really dropped below “mostly good”. And in a week where it wouldn’t have been out of the expected to see a team, robbed of a significant number of starters, failing to win the Carabao Cup Final and possibly even struggling against Southampton, instead we saw a crop of young academy players holding their own against Chelsea and leading the way against Southampton. It’s important to keep expectations in check. You’re not particularly going to want to roster Jayden Danns for Fantrax at this point in his career. We’re not doing a deep dive into Liverpool’s academy. But what we do have an eye on is what the likely lineup against Nottingham Forest might be this weekend.
And the injury list does still look long. We understand that Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Curtis Jones and Diogo Jota are definite absentees. It’s likely that Ryan Gravenberch, Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai will need a little longer to reach match-condition (although some positive news on Szoboszlai has been trickling out this evening). And we’ve got basically no information as yet as to whether Wataru Endo or Darwin Nunez will recover from their knocks for this one, though Klopp implied Nunez would play. So what does that leave us with and what do we make of it for Fantrax?
Firstly, it keeps Harvey Elliott firmly in the mix for ‘Top Streaming Option of the Week’. Secondly, it almost certainly means minutes for Cody Gakpo. We haven’t loved everything we’ve seen from Gakpo this year but that’s mostly in relation to the other options Liverpool had available. When in the midst of an injury crisis, there’s little question he’s a great option to be able to call upon as your 5th choice attacker. Lastly, we would expect Ibrahima Konaté back in next to Virgil Van Dijk but, if either is considered to have too many minutes in the legs after the long week they’ve had, Jarrell Quansah is intriguing, if you believe even Liverpool-B will keep Forest at arms length.
Nottingham Forest vs Liverpool - 3.00pm UK, 10.00am US kickoff, Saturday
What can we expect from Mitoma-less Brighton for the rest of the year?
Brighton have been afflicted by two major issues this season. The first is that Clearlake Capital have poached anything not locked down. The second is that they have picked up long-term injuries to key players with pretty unfortunate regularity. The news that second-round pick Kaoru Mitoma is out, likely for the rest of the season, will have hit Fantrax rosters that invested in him hard. It’s especially unfortunate, given he would’ve been held through the Asian Cup period. The truth of it is that this season was a bit stop-start for Mitoma and he didn’t as often hit the heights he achieved last season, but regardless, his absence is a big deal for Brighton.
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