The Overthinking Roundup: Gameweek 5

In which Bruno Fernandes found himself a defensive midfielder, Richarlison broke a drought and Sean Dyche indulged his basest defensive sicko tendencies.

And we’re back. Glad to have you with us once again. Hopefully you had a good International Break coping strategy ready and that you were in a good place for the return of real football.

It wasn’t necessarily a classic of a week, but it was definitely interesting in lots of ways. As usual, we’re here to break down what we saw in our Gameweek Review, and then to provide our Transaction advice to our paid subscribers.

Lets go.

Liverpool 3 - 1 Wolverhampton Wanderers

For the third week out of five, Liverpool did their now-semi-regular move of going behind, looking a total mess, then just scoring a bunch of goals to win the game. It’s fantastic for the watch-ability of a game as a neutral. Lets hope Jurgen never clocks he’s allowed to just set up a team to play well for 90 minutes. The starting lineup likely disappointed a number of Fantrax managers, with Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez starting on the bench and Trent Alexander-Arnold still out injured.

And the first half pretty much belonged to Wolves. It took Pedro Neto (20.5 points) seven minutes to create his first assist, leaving Joel Matip chasing shadows and crossing to Hwang Hee-Chan (11) to score. And the warnings weren’t heeded, with Neto again getting free to put in a fantastic cross onto the head of Matheus Cunha (6) from close range, who managed to botch the attempt so badly that it did not even end up classified as a shot by Opta. Make this week 5 of us begging Wolves to play an actual striker. They also got a pretty solid debut out of Jean-Ricner Bellegarde (4.5) without him really troubling the top-end of the Fantrax point tallies. Certainly it doesn’t look like he’ll be a significant downgrade on Matheus Nunes for them, which has to be seen as a plus. The midfield was tilting so much in Wolves’ favour that Klopp removed summer signing Alexis Mac Allister (5) at half time. It’s been a pretty rough start to Mac Allister’s Liverpool career but you’ve got to give some credit to Wolves for making it difficult for the Reds once again in the middle. Wolves, however, made the mistake of only being one goal ahead at the interval. And we talked in the preview article this week about how unlikely it seemed that Wolves would be able to keep Liverpool’s forwards at bay for the full game.

When the floodgates finally opened, it was the otherwise unremarkable Cody Gakpo (11.5) who got the goal. A 0.94 xG opportunity set up by a Mo Salah (26.5) shot gave the Dutchman the opener and Salah continued to be a thorn in the side for Wolves for the rest of the game. Poor Hugo Bueno came on late in the game only to twice see Salah set up goals from his side (even seeing Harvey Elliott’s late goal given as an Own Goal against him). The Egyptian has put any question of moving out of mind and looks every bit a Top 3 player as usual. West Ham next for Liverpool and it will be interesting which combination Klopp goes with to unlock West Ham’s defensive line.

Manchester United 1 - 3 Brighton and Hove Albion

We’ve hinted at it in numerous roundups and previews. We’ll say it now. Erik Ten Hag is a man under pressure. There’s just a whole lot of chaos in the side. He ended the game with Anthony Martial, Alejandro Garnacho, Facundo Pellistri and Hannibal Mejbri on the field, with Bruno Fernandes playing an unfamiliar defensive midfield role. We won’t get too far into the individual reasons for these odd player choices, but fundamentally it is the manager’s job to be able to get the best possible eleven players on the field, to set them up in a suitable manner and to motivate them. After another week where Ten Hag was tactically outmaneuvered by the opposing manager, it’s fair to say we have questions. It was positive for them to see Rasmus Hojlund out there and he was broadly fine. For Fantrax, he was a non-entity, though, with 3.5 Fantrax points. The thing that worried us in our signings profile for Hojlund was that he had really low shot volume.

He is still raw. And he doesn’t actually shoot that much for Atalanta (1.37 SOT / 90). So he’s going to have to scale up on that front or become hyper efficient with his chances if he’s going to contribute this season. Otherwise he’ll likely have a fair few anonymous games on the Fantrax stat sheet. This is a fun match of player and club but don’t be surprised if he takes a year to settle before being a must-own player.

The stat sheet will show he had one shot today (a header off target). Those who watched will also be screaming at me that he had another shot in the box, leading to a VAR-prevented goal. That’s still only 2 shots. Volume matters. It’s his debut. It was a game where United struggled. But we saw nothing today that makes us worried he was under-rated during draft-season for Fantrax this season.

For the visitors, this was as obvious a sign as you could want that Roberto De Zerbi does not care about your fantasy team. 6 changes and returns for the likes of Danny Welbeck and Adam Lallana meant popular Brighton assets were left unusable this week for most Fantrax managers. It did mean the return of blog favourite Tariq Lamptey, used in a LB role. He ended the day with two assists and 16 points (genuinely quite an impressive stat line to achieve). He’ll almost definitely be back to a rotation piece again soon, but it was a good reminder that Brighton do have fun players on their bench. Simon Adingra (15.5) points also enjoyed the matchup with Sergio Reguilon and claimed himself an assist. Our only real Brighton takeaway is that with European games incoming, we’re quite concerned how much we’ll be able to trust the guys we’ve drafted to play every week. But I’m sure Brighton fans don’t care. They just keep marching on.

West Ham 1 - 3 Manchester City

So I thought West Ham might cause City some problems this week. But they really didn’t. They did score first, but this was, once again, a City procession. They’d racked up 1.97 xG by half time. Erling Haaland (23.5) leads the league with 7 goals, despite also missing 8 big chances already this season and 5 (FIVE) in this game alone. He had almost 3 xG by himself in today’s game. But the big story of the day was probably Jeremy Doku (24.5), who scored the equaliser with a well taken shot whilst on the dribble into the box and generally gave Vladimir Coufal (13.25) a horrible time in defence for much of this game.

We were pretty confident he would get the start in this game, though called the wing-side wrong:

Having watched how Raheem Sterling was able to drive at Emerson at LB over and over again on the dribble in Chelsea’s trip to West Ham, I also wonder if we see Jeremy Doku retain the start on the RW for more than just availability reasons. We wrote a detailed profile on Doku, which focused quite a bit on his ability as a dribbler. Emerson’s one-v-one defending left a lot to be desired against Sterling, though Chelsea were unable to apply finishing touches to punish it. You’d better believe Erling Haaland will not be so forgiving if chances fall at his feet.

And we somehow got the part about Haaland not being forgiving wrong, too. But Doku looks every bit a guy you can start every single time he’s on the team-sheet. It just remains to be seen how often that is.

For West Ham players, you were probably already looking at other fixtures to find big fantasy performances, but, for those who spent large sums of FAAB, James Ward-Prowse (19.5) continued to reward you. He’s on 2 goals and 3 assists from an xG+xA of 2.08, so he’s running hot. But you can’t complain about that, given he’s proven a high-upside set and forget so far. He gets Liverpool next.

Tottenham 2 - 1 Sheffield United

Sometimes the pressure of getting something written forces you into starting to prepare these summaries before full-time whistles have blown. I’m glad that we didn’t bother with that in this case. We’d have had to rewrite basically everything after the wild final few minutes saw the scoreline flip on Sheffield United. We can bore anyone till the cows come home about xG differentials and, as I’m sure Tottenham fans would like us to point out, they did have the better of this fairly comfortably. But putting all of that aside, when it’s the 95th minute and you’re 1-0 up, it’s a real gut punch to not take home even a single point.

We’ve mostly talked about the opposition when we’ve covered Sheffield United so far, other than a nod to Cameron Archer’s (0.5) debut double, and that’s been mostly justified. But this week, they put up some reasonable points tallies. They had 5 players on 8 or more Fantrax points, including double digit returns for Gustavo Hamer (18.5) and Wes Foderingham (12.25). Hamer did leave with an injury, which marred what was otherwise his best day since arriving in Sheffield. They also had an obscene, but not out of character, 13 aerial duel day from Ollie McBurnie (2) whose late red card for dissent stung any manager who had backed him. It might seem silly to say after a 2 point outing, but McBurnie offers a really solid floor, even when Sheffield United are outmatched.

For Spurs, we’ll just say that we’re happy for Richarlison (18), even if his 18 points likely helped no one given he didn’t start the game. There were quiet days from Destiny Udogie (2.75) and Son Heung-Min (2.5), but not really in any way that presents any kind of concern. We’re writing it off as a rare off-day. James Maddison (14.5) remains a Fantrax-point metronome though. We’ll learn a lot about Spurs in the next two games, with a trip to Arsenal and a visit from Liverpool incoming. I’m not sure you can shy away from starting any of the main names in those games.

Aston Villa 3 - 1 Crystal Palace

Speaking of games that turn at the death . . . step up Aston Villa. Unai Emery’s side were pretty good throughout the game, but found themselves behind not long after the half to Odsonne Edouard’s (18) fourth goal of the season. They were perhaps also unlucky that Joel Ward (-4.5) wasn’t able to turn his header from a corner into the net late into the second half or that Eberechi Eze (8.5) saw a good effort saved by Emi Martinez shortly after to keep it at 1-0. But they probably needed to put at least one of these away, given they were getting out-shot, out-possessed and out-xG’d by Villa all game.

Villa shot three times after Eze’s chance. Jhon Duran (12.5) hit a lovely strike from just inside the box, Douglas Luiz (19.5) struck a penalty and Leon Bailey (13) tapped in late from a Moussa Diaby (10.5) cross. It was a real reminder of the fire-power in this Villa side. Douglas Luiz adding penalty duty to his already significant set-piece repertoire puts him in good position to return high-end starter value this season and although he was a topic of much debate between the Overthinking Football group during the Summer, the extra duties have clearly helped elevate him. We’re also intrigued what Ollie Watkins’s (12.5) ceiling will be once he starts actually putting the ball in the net again. He’s hit double figures in 80% of his games this season without a single goal to his name. Lucas Digne (18) seems back to his fantasy best, but Alex Moreno’s first appearance in the squad this season could put his place in jeopardy.

Fulham 1 - 0 Luton Town

I had a note next to this game that this was a “who are you” game for both sides. Fulham have been pretty bad for a good chunk of the season (though still getting vital points on the board) and Luton have been beaten pretty comfortably in every game so far. I was hoping to see one side show us something new. I’m not sure they did. The xG on this one shows a pretty even game, with Luton edging Fulham 1.10 to 0.96, despite Fulham having 78% of the ball. If you’re picturing 90 minutes of Fulham tamely passing the ball about in front of a deep Luton defence, before taking sub-optimal shots, you’d be right. Carlos Vinicius (10.5) applied a nice finish to their best chance and it proved to be the difference. I’m not meaning to be too down on Fulham because of this game specifically—there are not many teams that will play this way against them, for a start—but it was not an overly inspired day for them. On the Fantrax side, it was a real positive to see Willian (15.5) finally back out there. Managers who drafted him have waited a long time to see him and he did well with three key passes and an assist. Fulham have two London derbies in a row to follow this.

For Luton, they had Alfie Doughty, Ryan Giles, Elijah Adebayo and Ross Barkley missing from the starting lineup we’re used to seeing. And the new lineup did not inspire. We did see Fantrax relevant days from Issa Kabore (13.5) and Jacob Brown (11), but we’d be amazed if anyone started either. I’m not sure we can trust anyone here until they show some ambition in their play. They’re making it really difficult for teams to score, but crucially, they’re eventually allowing them to. I don’t mean that to sound harsh to Luton: I think that using the Premier League money to improve the stadium and infrastructure is completely the correct thing to do. They could invest every penny of the Premier League money into new players and still only nudge themselves to being the 17th best team in the league. Spending on the future of the club is a rational and laudable decision from the ownership. But it may make this a long season. I’m not sure any Luton players should be rostered, but the next three games against Wolves, Everton, and Burnley would be a good time for them to show me I’m wrong.

Newcastle United 1 - 0 Brentford

This one is the first game I watched that felt like a post-International Break game (spoiler: there’ll be more of them). A fairly changed Newcastle side did fairly well to limit Brentford’s scoring opportunities and the game swung around a number of refereeing decisions. We’re not the sort of football blog to spend ages litigating referee performances. Instead, we’ll just say that the open play xG on this one was pretty dire. It was 0.28 to 0.37 in favour of Brentford. Newcastle clearly had an eye on Tuesday’s Champions League game against AC Milan, which is reasonable. If you did start a Newcastle player, they probably did pretty well on points. The defenders were all in double figures, courtesy of the CS. Anthony Gordon (10.5) got the bonus of the assist from the penalty to boost his score. Callum Wilson (9) is one of the savviest centre-forwards in the game and was never likely to miss the chance to take the lead when it was presented from the spot. It was also nice to see a start for Elliot Anderson (7). It was a muted day on the attacking stat front for him, but he showed he could compete and collected hard-earned tackle and aerial points to go alongside his successful take-ons. We still really like him, so we will monitor his usage going forward.

Our Gameweek Preview focused on whether this game would show us Brentford were “for real” as a club punching well above their weight on xG / xGA metrics so far this year. Consider the proverbial can punted. I’m not sure we learned much at all about Brentford’s long-term prospects here. They neither created or allowed too much, but they hung in with Newcastle for the full game. Yoanne Wissa (11) has been a revelation for those who drafted him as a late flier and there’s probably something to be said for him managing to have a fairly down day, but still put up 11 points. His 5 shots led the team, whilst Bryan Mbuemo (2.5) was somewhat swallowed up by Newcastle’s defence. We’re pretty comfortable betting on an instant bounceback from Mbeumo, as he gets to host Everton next.

Bournemouth 0 - 0 Chelsea

The good news for Mauricio Pochettino is that at the current point a game pace, Chelsea are almost definitely safe from relegation. “A billion well spent”, am I right? That one’s for you, Football Banter accounts, following the first 0-0 game of this Premier League season. Been a while since we’ve seen CS points shared. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

If the late game Saturday looked leggy, this one took it to extremes. There were periods late in the game where both sides seemed entirely happy to walk. Enzo Fernandez (4.5) and Nicolas Jackson (0.5) were the two who seemed most impacted by their exertions on the Chelsea side, both struggling to show their usual burst and sharpness. Chelsea probably should still have won this game, with those who believe in curses watching Levi Colwill (12.25) to be the latest affected. The out-of-position CB had 3 shots. One was a close-range goal disallowed for moving slightly too early, the other two from a corner that he saw twice kept out. It’s certainly true that “potential” and “xG victories” will only get you so far. And Chelsea fans have likely not fully recovered from seeing similar epitaphs after bad results over and over again last season. But they feel a bit like a Rorsach test at this point in the season. You can really see what you want to see in the performances of this weird collection of players. They get Aston Villa next, which will present a bigger defensive test than Bournemouth did. Their fitness and conditioning coaches have work to do this week!

It’s week 5 and we’re finally starting to see signs of Bournemouth getting their team healthy. Marcus Tavernier (9.5) and Dango Ouattara (6) both got good chunks of playing time from the start in this one. Still no sign of Tyler Adams, yet, but Lewis Cook (15.5) did a pretty good impression of the American this week, with three tackles won, five interceptions, and two clearances. I have no idea why anyone would’ve started him, but if you did, can you send us lottery numbers? Bournemouth head to Brighton next for a South Coast derby where you’d imagine they might find themselves in a higher paced test.

Everton 0 - 1 Arsenal

Boy Arsenal, I don’t know. Something isn’t really clicking yet this year. They could be doing a lot worse than 13 points in real football terms, but the Fantrax magic is still a little less than we got used to last year. This game was really bad to watch in the first half. Honestly if this article didn’t have to be written, I might’ve ditched watching at the interval. It mercifully got a little better in the second half, but not a lot. If you’re being generous, the first half was an example of encouraging defensive solidity from Everton. But the issue, as Luton are finding week after week, is that if you go behind and have no gears to move up into, you won’t find yourself with a lot of points.

The most notable Arsenal storyline (other than a goalkeeper switch) is that Gabriel Martinelli (-0.5) limped off with an injury, shortly after being denied a goal by a VAR intervention. It as a brutal swing for anyone relying on the Brazilian forward in a close matchup. Even if this is a minor problem for Martinelli, he’s going to miss at least the game with Tottenham next week. If it’s potentially more serious, he could also be unavailable for the games against Bournemouth and Manchester City too. It’s a real blow. Leando Trossard (21) was the benefactor this week, coming off the bench and providing a genuine spark in attack to this Arsenal side. He’s rostered in basically every serious league and he can probably be trusted to start at least the next few games.

For Sean Dyche, old reliable Abdoulaye Doucoure (9) was the only man to provide decent returns here, though some small positives will be taken that Dwight McNeil (-1) got through almost a full game and Dominic Calvert-Lewin (4) made it off the bench for a 20 minute cameo. Between that duo and Jack Harrison, Everton will be praying they can start to turn around what looks an ominous start for their survival hopes (which is incredible to write after 5 games).

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