Fantrax 23/24: Comeback Player of the Year contenders

We cast an eye over the field competing for the Comeback Player of the Year award and play pretend bookmaker

Most of us are simple at heart when it comes to our entertainment needs. Give us a surprising breakout story to get behind. Give us a fall from grace. Then give us the heart-warming comeback.

We’ve already talked this Summer about breakouts. We’ve talked about potential traps in the ranker data. Now we’re on to the redemption arc. In this article we’re going to look at the bounce-back candidates of 2023/24 and make our predictive pitch for the Overthinking Football Comeback Player of the Year.

In some of the others, we’ve imposed strict rules on eligibility. We’re less worried by that here. Sure, part of this is clearly implying some level of Fantrax performance above their Consensus Rank / ADP value. But I’m also entirely happy to indulge in a little narrative romanticism when the mood takes me, so some of this might just be about vibes. That’s what you subscribe to this stats newsletter for, right? That said, I’m going to resist writing about Callum Hudson-Odoi given his move’s not official yet.

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Contender #1: Luis Diaz, Liverpool

A year ago, Luis Diaz was sat 9th in ADP. A whole bunch of factors conspired to rob us of anything close to a first round value from Luis last year and he finished with a meagre 0.29 in WAR and 8.47 in xFpts. Safe to say that neither were a first round level. Some of that is that he only started 10 games. Some of it was that Liverpool just weren’t up to much for most of the season. But it wasn’t meant to be like this for Diaz, signed ostensibly as the direct Sadio Mane replacement in January 2021.

The complication standing between Diaz and a return to first round value is mostly competition at this point, given they’ve added Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo to an already crowded forward group. Diaz has also only really played one position for Liverpool, potentially limiting his ability to move around the formation and get additional minutes that way.

But we have some faith in the Colombian. He moved from Portugal after a year with an obscene 1.07 xG+xA per 90 and, although no one comes close to that in the Premier League, he showed a respectable 0.58 in his first half season and that value over a whole season would be a very solid foundation for his Comeback Player of the Year campaign. He might not get to 30+ starts, but we’d take 25 at the level he’s shown to be capable of very happily!

Were we a betting shop, we’d be offering 4/1 odds on Diaz, primarily due to his competition.

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Contender #2: Reece James