Big Questions for GW9
What's on our minds going into the ninth week of the season?
Hello. Welcome back. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the short break from the weekly pressure of streamer selection. A few things have happened since we last wrote. Firstly, the long awaited (and much delayed due to scheduling) finals of the Key Pass Collective Quiz took place. I (Gordon) represented Team Europe versus Ryan facing Team USA. No spoilers yet here, in case you haven’t listened yet. You can find it on Spotify and you can feel free to berate me for any incorrect answers. Secondly, Andrew disappeared off on Honeymoon. Congratulations (you slacker). He will be back with us soon, hopefully refreshed and with memories of United’s last few weeks firmly purged from memory. And, lastly, I’m booked on a trip this weekend. That one I’m not expecting any of you to particularly care about, but it does mean that for this week, there will be no detailed Roundup Article. This is mostly because I expect to only see highlights from most of the games and don’t want to write too much about things I’ve not seen. We will move back to a normal schedule again for Gameweek 10, when we’ll have the full crew back again.
Our admin aside, we’ve got real football back again. And it’s a good slate of games, with multiple derby games, big bottom half clashes and a game between Aston Villa and West Ham that is destined to confuse everyone based on the doppelganger kits that the two clubs seem to employ this season.
And once again I have questions. This week I’m asking:
Where to look for Fantrax points in the Merseyside Derby?
Will the air miles impact Chelsea again when Arsenal come to town?
Who will De Zerbi turn to for the trip to the Etihad and can you start them?
Can United finally deliver for their Fantrax maangers in the nicest of matchups?
Is Kieran Trippier in contention for a second Overthinking Football MVP year?
Are we starting everybody in the Merseyside Derby?
Everton have won two Merseyside derbies since 2010. And one of them was during the crowd-less Covid-era, when all bets were off. Lets just get that fact out of the way early. The last time Everton won a derby in front of fans, Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta each put a goal past a Liverpool team with a centre back duo of Martin Skrtel and Sotirios Kyrgiakos to give David Moyes a 2-0 victory over Roy Hodgson’s Liverpool side. Be honest, you’d forgotten that Kyrgiakos even existed, right? Everton finished 7th in the League that year, just 4 points behind their local rivals who finished in 6th. A lot has changed since then.
This weekend sees Everton making that familiar cross-city trip to Anfield with just 7 points from their first 8 games, hovering three points above the relegation spots. Sean Dyche has been quick to point out that they’ve won a number of games this year in the xG count, but it’s not translated itself to points often enough. Whereas Jurgen Klopp’s side have maintained their push towards the top of the table despite regularly putting themselves at numerical disadvantages and having found Clean Sheets harder than usual to come by. Regardless, both of these sides have been pretty good for Fantrax scoring this season. Everton are in form, coming off the back of a game where we saw six starters scoring 15 or more points as they saw off a hapless Bournemouth side. Liverpool had a more mixed day in their 2-2 draw against Brighton, but their player’s expected Fantrax points this season look really healthy, with seven players (six regular starters plus Jarell Quansah) in double figures for xFpts. And that’s not even including Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Both teams seem capable of getting chances, neither team is particularly good at keeping Clean Sheets. So we think this is as simple as just starting anyone who’ll have attacking involvement and hoping that the chaotic energy around these two teams continues to spill over. For Liverpool, the International Break does mean a whole bunch of travel, particularly for their South American trio of Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Alexis Mac Allister and if we were making a guess now, this might be a game where Diogo Jota gets a start. But this is certainly not a matchup to shy away from any of the attacking names for Liverpool. In all likelihood, you’re probably still going to start Virgil Van Dijk, too. Andrew Robertson’s status is still up in the air, following an injury this week (the latest rumour is there is a potential call to made on surgery, which would come with a three month period out). It made Konstantinos Tsimikas a target for anyone active enough to be checking Twitter for updates on Scottish International games (sickos, the lot of you). The only problem we see is that we’re not actually sure that he’s every-week startable. In his spot starts last year, Tsimikas was often not much better than a matchup dependent streamer, with all but one of his starter-level scores coming courtesy of a Liverpool Clean Sheet. And they don’t seem to keep too many of those this year. Obviously he’s still an ok gamble and if he’s got the spot for three months, there’s plenty of good matchups in that time span. And he was one of the best streamer choices two years ago in the game time he got (though he did have some set piece exposure back then). Liverpool do tend to beat Everton and they might do it with a Clean Sheet. Just we’d maybe save the victory laps on picking him up until we actually see him produce again.
Everton wise, they’re as healthy as they’ve looked all season and it’s going to be really interesting to see how they line up for this. Last time out, Sean Dyche started with an aggressive team featuring all of James Garner, Dwight McNeill, Jack Harrison, Adoulaye Doucoure and Dominic Calvert-Lewin. It’s one thing lining up that way against Bournemouth and quite another against Liverpool. But one thing we’d predict quite confidently is that Everton are likely to need to score to even take a point in this one. We’d love to see Dyche line up similarly again. But understandably, this is not a week we’ve got any interest in the Everton defence. James Tarkowski’s been in good form the last few games but you’re playing with fire if you roll him out in this one!
Liverpool vs Everton - 12.30pm UK, 7.30am US kickoff, Saturday
Will the air miles (and altitude) impact Chelsea again?
Sitting in their (now familiar) 11th placed spot, there’s a strange optimism around Chelsea at the moment. Finally achieving consecutive wins (three if you include the Carabao Cup) with a midfield that looks to be clicking and forwards that are starting to score, optimism abounds. And as we’ve said here a lot of times, their underlying expected goal difference numbers look solidly good for fourth in the league (though we would likely adjust Liverpool up if they’d just keep eleven men on the field). But with a visit from high-flying Arsenal incoming, we’ve got our eye on their International exertions. After the last International Break, they faced Bournemouth. Winless Bournemouth, with the second worst xGA / 90 in the league. And an exhausted looking Enzo Fernandez, fresh from a trip to La Paz, walked about the pitch, passing to an equally exhausted looking Nicolas Jackson. This was the pattern for 90 minutes before the referee mercifully blew the whistle. This time around, they get to play the league’s second best defence, who just held Manchester City out. And, although Jackson remained home to have a minor operation on his wrist so hasn’t travelled, both Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez have headed to South America. In Caicedo’s case, it was his turn to travel to Bolivia which is one of the toughest places to travel to in all of World football. Both have two fixtures that they’re likely to play the majority of, before travelling back to the UK. So the matchup is tough and the engine of their recent improvement is likely to be both jetlagged and fatigued. So are we fading Chelsea this week?
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