Fantrax Team Previews: Part Two

With the season approaching, we turn our powers of prediction towards each of the 20 teams competing in the league this season and make our Fantrax predictions

Fantrax (and football in general) loves to make a mockery of predictions. Anyone who had Arsenal second, Chelsea and Liverpool out of the top 4 and Brighton to be the most fun team in the league this time last Summer would’ve been very wealthy if they’d backed that at the local betting shop. But half the fun of the Summer season is in boldly predicting how things might play out.

With that in mind, in this two part-series, we’ll go team by team and look at some of the questions around them this year and provide a Summer “bold take” for each team. And we very much look forward to looking back on these in a few short months time to see just how off-base we were!

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Liverpool

Liverpool’s 22/23 season was straight-up strange. Even allowing for the impact of injuries, with the likes of Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz missing a lot of time, it was as if, almost across the board, the rest of the players had forgotten how the Jurgen Klopp system is meant to work. It particularly impacted the defence, with Liverpool finishing as only the 9th best team in the league on xG allowed (having been 3rd the year before). Fabinho in particular, took a lot of individual media criticism, but it was really a collective failing across the board until Klopp tweaked things later in the season to change the shape. From April onwards, Liverpool were on a hot run and won 7 of their last 11, whilst remaining unbeaten which saw them narrowly miss out on Top-4.

They’ve set about revamping things this transfer window, with a clear focus on the 8 position, signing both Alexis Mac Allister and Dominic Szoboszlai (who we wrote about a little in our McLachApp post). If we are to imply anything from these two signings, it’s probably that the tactical change in the midfield shape is here to stay. Though the team as a whole benefitted from that change, no one benefitted more so than Trent Alexander-Arnold, who returned to his elite scoring ways from April onwards. This puts him firmly back in the first round mix. But it’s really the forwards where things are most interesting. Rotation looks a real risk this time out, but there’s value to be had if you correctly pick the main starters (and probably some WAR winners, even amongst those that don’t start every week). Darwin Nunez is the highest ceiling of the rotational set (e.g. everyone not named Mo Salah) because of his, frankly obscene, 0.96 npxG+xA per 90 and he’s the one I’m most interested in.

Bold Take: Darwin Nunez will finish as a top-5 player on average WAR, but outside of the top 10 in Fantasy Points.

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Luton Town

I really wanted to be the first football writer to not mention Kenilworth Road and the dissonance of the tiny Bedfordshire ground welcoming the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal this year. But the problem is, it’s too evocative and telling an illustration of the challenges that face Luton Town this year. Make no mistake, anything better than relegation on the resources available to Rob Edwards will be one of the most impressive performances we’ve seen from a team in the Premier League. So does that mean that we should be wary for Fantrax?