The Overthinking Preview: GW19 (Boxing Day) Edition

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

Hello, welcome back and Merry Christmas.

It’s smack-bang in the middle of the holidays, the games are coming thick and fast, and we’re all turkey-ed out and, full disclosure, I’m at the beach. So there’s no room for long introductions this Gameweek. Let’s just get into it!

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Newcastle United - Nottingham Forest

Key Storylines: Can an exhausted Newcastle ruin Chris Wood’s St James’s Park return? And is there anything Nuno can do differently with this Forest squad to pick up points?

Streamer Potential: We thought Newcastle might rotate at the weekend but they named a fairly unchanged squad, other than enforced changes. You could tell. But there are very few options for Eddie Howe to change things up. And most relevant Newcastle names will be already rostered (although do check on Sven Batman’s availability). The only other name to monitor is probably Lewis Hall if he draws a rare start at left back. If you are looking to stream from this one, Nottingham Forest players will come with better availability. But with the Nuno revolution getting off to a fairly inauspicious start, you’re mostly betting on Newcastle continuing to struggle. Neco Williams was a tip in our last Roundup and he scored 13.75 points despite conceding 3 Goals. That kind of Ghost Point production can catapult a player into every week relevance so keep an eye on him. Sure, this matchup is worse on paper. But a fresher set of legs under a new manager makes this more even than we might’ve expected earlier in the season.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Kieran Trippier (13.81), Alexander Isak (11.93), Sven Botman (10.86)

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Bournemouth - Fulham

Key Storylines: How do Fulham stop an in-form Dominic Solanke from continuing his purple form? And with Raul Jiminez still suspended, is there any value to be found in Fulham’s attack?

Streamer Potential: Bournemouth started Dango Ouattara for the first time in a long time. Only instead of a winger, they played him at LB. Consider us vaguely intrigued, because he got 9 points, courtesy of not losing anything to GAO. With Milos Kerkez reportedly out for a few games, keep an eye on this one. He doesn’t get Clean Sheet bonuses, sure. But Bournemouth don’t keep many of those. So if you’re offering us a creative presence who won’t lose points for that? We’re in. For Fulham, we didn’t trust Rodrigo Muniz going into the last game, we don’t trust him coming out. It’s pretty barren on the Fulham side of the ball at this point with Willian also out and both Alex Iwobi and Antonee Robinson now rostered in most leagues. We’d steer clear of anyone else.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Dominic Solanke (11.53), Marcus Tavernier (10.71), Dango Ouattara (10.68)

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Sheffield United - Luton Town

Key Storylines: Off the back of two great results for these two sides, can either of them pick up the vital 3 points in this huge-relegation contender matchup?

Streamer Potential: Don’t look too soon but, as we’ve talked about a couple of times now, Chris Wilder has this team looking vaguely competent. A draw with Aston Villa was a great result and it didn’t require huge swathes of luck. They held Villa to just 0.86 xG over the 90 minutes, a quarter of which came on Nicolo Zaniolo’s late goal. They’ve been solid defensively. Before that one, we talked about Vinicius de Souza and his points tallies in difficult games. He carried on that run. This is an altogether different affair, as these two teams do not have huge talent disparity. A month ago we’d have said Luton were clearly the better side (and their win against Newcastle shows their threat). But with Sheffield United suddenly looking lively, it’s not as obvious which side to look at for streamer names. If you have a strong feeling that one side of the two is better than the other, there’s strong streamer potential. Especially with this falling early-ish in the Gameweek to bank the safe starter. If we were pushed, we’d still lean Luton side of this. But certainly not be as much as we would’ve said pre-Wilder.

Top 3 Projected Expected Points (expected starters): Alfie Doughty (11.54), Cameron Archer (10.17), Oli McBurnie (9.88)

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Burnley - Liverpool