Fantrax Breakouts: 2023/24
The under-the-radar (ish) U21 gems that could win you your Fantrax Championships
Here at Overthinking Football, we believe draft season is the best time of year. And the best thing about the best time of year? For our money, it’s the time we get to spend picking breakouts.
Continuing our annual tradition, we’re going to use this article to highlight 8 names that we think have the potential to breakout for Fantrax in 2023/24. And in keeping with the arbitrary rules we set ourselves last year that means:
The player is 21 or under at time of writing
The player will have a total (and ideally average) points tally significantly higher than their previous best
The player must not have already shown superstar numbers (looking at you, Erling) or have featured on this list last year (Jacob Ramsey, Michael Olise, Harvey Elliott).
We had a pretty good year last year, with only one miss and many others over-performing their ADP considerably. The pressure is on and, full disclosure, it’s been a tougher year to make insightful predictions. But lets see if lightning can strike twice…
Julio Enciso - 19 years old, Brighton and Hove Albion
Although this list isn’t in any particular order, Julio Enciso was the first name on it. And I’m not alone in that, given his lofty position in our Ranker Consensus Ranks. He’s going into his second season at the Amex, having previously been a starter in Paraguay at Libertad from a very young age.
He was a rotation option for Brighton last year, but really started to come along in the latter part of the year (helped also by Solly March’s late injury) with all 7 of his Premier League starts coming April onwards. When he did get on the pitch, he already showed that he had something about him, putting up 10.07 xFpts and a 57% Quality Start rate. So why is it that I’m confident he’s got the potential for more?
The first reason is that his stats profile really sings. He had an xG+xAG of 0.64 per 90 (admittedly partially boosted by a number of sub appearances) and was getting that mostly via 4.2 shots per 90. Over 4 shots per 90 for a wide player at his age normally means one of two things:
They’re taking dumb shots they shouldn’t be taking (which would show up in low xG per shot). Or…
They’re flashing some really rare potential.
Well Enciso’s xG per shot is right in line with average shot quality (around 0.11 per shot) so it’s unlikely to be the former. Add in his 1.44 Key Passes per 90 and 3.4 successful take ons per 90 (from a 50% dribble success rate) and it really looks like there’s something here that could translate for Fantrax and be a sign of something special on the pitch.
Sure, there’s competition in the likes of Solly March and Joao Pedro, and Brighton are allowing other clubs to carve up the midfield that had served them so well last year, but this looks like a guy who is well worth a bet in De Zerbi’s very winger friendly system. Don’t overpay, because he’s still got to win and hold the spot, but certainly watch for him.
Amadou Onana - 21 years old, Everton
Moving to a completely different type of player for our second pick, we have Amadou Onana, Everton’s young Belgian midfielder. He too is entering his second season in the Premier League, having previously played at Lille.
In his first season in the league, he was solid with flashes shown of high-level potential. And it didn’t take him long to do it. In Gameweek 2 of last season, I wrote the following:
One player you’d struggle to have missed in that same game was the substitute debut of Amadou Onana (7). Though he lost the ball attempting a half-turn, leading to Villa’s second goal, the attempt was fully in-character for an all-action midfield display from the young prospect. He looks like he’s got the potential to be a real difference maker, for a team that are short in that department.
He went on to build on that with 30 all-action appearances where he didn’t really offer much more than streaming appeal for Fantrax, with 7 xFpts per game and only a 45% Quality Start rate. At times, he looked like he was still learning to round off his game, but this one is a bet on elite physical traits and acknowledging that he managed to look respectable in his first season in the league.
Backing anyone to breakout from Everton is a tough projection, given their struggles of late, but at least with Sean Dyche there is some hope. He feels like the sort of player Sean Dyche could choose to game-plan in as a set-piece and goal threat, on top of improvement on what he’s already shown. At the basically zero price it costs to draft him, I wouldn’t be upset to stash him in most deep-league sizes.
Evan Ferguson - 18 years old, Brighton
Full disclosure, this one is a slight bend of the spirit of the rules I set myself above. Evan Ferguson did not appear in our breakouts article this time last year. But after 1.5 appearances in the league, he did get a standalone article because he jumped off the screen as a dynamic young forward.
He’s been at Brighton since they signed him from Bohemians as a 15 year-old and has impressed basically everywhere he’s been. Last season was his first real taste of the first team, all of it coming from late December onwards. He showed he belonged. So much so that Fabinho decided the best thing to do to counter the threat would be to kick him off the pitch. Despite injuries and his manager being careful with his minutes as he develops, he finished the season with 10 starts, 6 goals and 2 assists. It was only good for 7.59 xFpts and a lowly 22% Quality Start rate, though.
You might be tempted to think if he had good goal numbers, but low xFpts that he was not involved much outside of goal contributions. And that wouldn’t be totally unfair. But he did offer glimpses of on-ball ability that hint there’s more to come outside of the shots. But it’s the shots I’m mostly intrigued by. A bit like his team-mate discussed above, Evan is a huge shot-volume guy for a player his age, putting up 3.41 shots per 90. And his shot quality is even better than Enciso, putting up a very respectable 0.15 xG per shot (for reference Harry Kane’s career average is 0.13). It’s a small sample and Evan does not (yet) finish those chances as well as Harry does. But if you’re looking for a sign of upside, this is definitely one.
Brighton have rotated their centre forward role for about as long as they’ve been in the league, and Joao Pedro has played down the middle in early preseason fixtures, but the spot is still there for the taking if someone can truly make it their own. Whoever wins it has also got good service from wide at Brighton, no matter who ends up winning the battle on the right side. It feels as though minutes on the pitch are the only thing between Evan and a true announcement as one of Europe’s young stars.
Dango Ouattara - 21 years old, Bournemouth
Bournemouth’s multi-club model seems to have paid dividends last January when it saw Dango Ouattara move from FC Lorient to the South Coast of England. In his half-season, he flashed some of the potential he’d shown in France, where he was averaging 0.87 goal creating actions per 90. In other words, in every 10 games, he was worth 9 goals. If that sounds high, that’s because it is. It was good enough for 7th overall across all big-5 leagues per FBRef.
At Bournemouth he wasn’t quite at that level, offering 9.94 xFpts and a 57% Quality Start rate. But it wouldn’t have been a fair expectation for him to be instantly as good as he was for FC Lorient coming over mid-season and joining a team whose January business did have them on an upwards trajectory, but whose metrics early in the season were clearly some of the worst in the division (their expected goal difference per 90 remained worst in the league across the whole season).
Whilst Dango isn’t going to be doing anything about the bucket-load of goals Bournemouth concede, he does show a nice mixed profile of passing, dribbling and shooting to create goals at the other end and, combined with some of the other January additions, raises the ceiling of Bournemouth’s occasionally lethargic attack considerably.
Not to mention the fact that Bournemouth have just recruited a well-respected young manager who has just spent time in La Liga lifting a club with limited resources to competing week-in week-out with the rest of the league. There’s upside both at a team level and at a player level here. I’m buying in.
Quick Hits:
If Chelsea are good, it’ll likely be on the back of Enzo Fernandez. His 7.12 xFpts last year weren’t anything to write home about, but his creativity was on show, despite Chelsea’s goal-scoring lethargy. If they can take a leap with Poch, he’s got potential for a whole bunch of Key Pass and Assist points. He seems almost guaranteed to beat his points tallies from last year. You may also want to consider Malo Gusto who, whilst not at Reece James’s level output wise, could find himself on the end of a golden opportunity for playing time in a historically full-back friendly team if Reece’s injury woes were to continue. This year’s Kostas Tsimikas?
Tottenham are moving system and potentially losing Harry Kane. What does that mean for their prospects? There’s a wide range of outcomes here. If we’re looking for someone who could really benefit, it’s Destiny Udogie, returning from his Serie A loan with some really healthy attacking metrics. There’s certainly a possibility you want nothing to do with Spurs from a defensive standpoint this year. But if you are a gambling sort, this one is the cheapest exposure you’ll get.
It seems likely Manchester United will sign a forward at some point in this window. But until they do, you’ve probably got to keep Alejandro Garnacho at least on the watchlist. His 6.37 xFpts last season don’t tell the full story of the talent he has and, although it’s still raw, he’s a little like Harvey Elliott last year in that all it would take is opportunity for him to hugely over-return on his draft price.
Have we missed anyone that you’re targeting as a breakout candidate in 2023/24? Let us know in the Comments or on Twitter. And don’t forget to subscribe and tell your friends about us if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read!