The Overthinking Preview: GW15 Edition

In which we try to pick the interesting elements from an entire slate of games in one post.

Hello and welcome to the second of our alternative Gameweek Preview articles. Festive fixtures make combining Big Questions and Roundup hard to do, so we use a different format to cover as much as possible in advance of each game

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Crystal Palace - Liverpool

Key Storylines: With no Eze and only one win in the last eight games (five losses, two draws), how can Palace arrest the slide that they’re in? Can Liverpool continue to apply pressure to the top of the table prior to Salah heading to AFCON?

Streamer Potential: Despite memories of ‘Crystanbul’ probably not feeling that long ago to a lot of us, in reality it’s been a long time since Palace have looked like a bogey team for Liverpool. Jefferson Lerma occasionally offers defensive stats in games where he’s forced to be particularly active but we can’t look past the fact that Liverpool are heavy favourites here and we don’t really expect too many team sheet surprises. You can monitor for repeat starts from Joe Gomez (though we think it’s unlikely) but after Joel Matip’s injury severity was confirmed, we’d assume Ibrahima Konate is long gone in most league sizes.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Eberechi Eze (14.5 projected xFpts), Mohamed Salah (13.8), Michael Olise (12.0)

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Brighton - Burnley

Key Storylines: Does Joao Pedro’s style only work against tired defenders? And with Everton now climbing the table, can Burnley change anything to start picking up more points?

Streamer Potential: What a difference a few days make for Burnley. They played fine against Wolves but really didn’t create enough to truly threaten to score or win the game. Even against Brighton’s often leaky defence, I’m just not sure I trust Burnley players to exploit it. For Brighton, Facundo Buonanotte is probably the only player with a reasonable chance to start in attack that is low rostered. But his points tallies are middling. There’ll be better defences to bet on, too, but if you want to back the Clean Sheet here because of the opposition there’s probably opportunity to do so with at least three of the four expected starters under 15% rostered.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Kaoru Mitoma (12.8), Simon Adingra (12.0), Pascal Gross (11.4)

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Manchester United - Bournemouth

Key Storylines: What are United doing defensively and does it even matter, given they’re three points behind Manchester City despite it? And, despite Bournemouth breaking their 2+ xG streak at the weekend (1.9 vs Palace), how good should we be feeling about these Cherries?

Streamer Potential: United defenders not called Luke Shaw will forever worry me until they show some sign of being able to prevent attackers getting free runs at back-pedalling centre-backs. That Chelsea didn’t punish them more for their openness says more about Chelsea’s attack than United’s defence. For Bournemouth, one of the more interesting stories of midweek was a start for Luis Sinisterra, who played well on the left side of the Bournemouth attack. We’d imagine Marcus Tavernier will return to the side but if Sinisterra does start, he’s probably the one to watch streamer-wise for Bournemouth.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Bruno Fernandes (15.5), Antony (11.4), Alejandro Garnacho (10.2)

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Sheffield United - Brentford