The Overthinking Roundup: Gameweek 3

In which we saw a bunch of early goals, West Ham temporarily topping the pile, Erling Haaland missing a penalty, and Everton missing 4 big chances (again).

By the time we next see Premier League football, the English Transfer Window will be closed. This Friday’s waivers falling on deadline day is an awkward timing, though at time of writing, there aren’t many rumoured major incomings. It’ll still be a nervous September, though, as other leagues (including the Saudi Pro-League) do have later deadlines. The (perhaps mischievous given they were about to play Newcastle the next day) rumours that Liverpool were about to see a raid for Mo Salah picked up on Saturday, for example, and, although clubs can turn down bids, the threat of star players becoming unsettled is not what any manager will want.

Depending on draft timings, many leagues will have already seen losses of multiple first and second round players to injury / transfers out (Kane, De Bruyne, Nkunku at a minimum). Lets pray for no more. They really hurt the competitiveness of individual leagues, even if you feel smug when you’ve avoided them yourself!

Anyway, on to the on-pitch action.

Unexpectedly big numbers were the story of the Gameweek

• Friday night reminded us once again that Luton Town could be in for a long year. For most of the first half, they kept it compact. But they went a goal down regardless with Raheem Sterling (33 fpts) dribbling his way through for his first of the night. Keeping Chelsea to 0.5 xG in that half was fairly fine. The challenge is that in the second half, the second they opened up a bit, Chelsea picked them off. Elijah Abebayo (2.5) looked capable of holding the ball up even against a solid defence, but Luton could not build anything. For Chelsea, Sterling has started the season really well, and will be a draft bargain if he continues like this, but the real story of last night is Nicolas Jackson (22), who will probably feel aggrieved he didn’t leave with an assist (or two) to go along with his first Chelsea goal. He finished the night with 2 KP, 3 SOT, 2 CoS, and, most importantly, one goal. There’s still some rawness to his game, but he is younger than Mykhailo Mudryk and is demonstrating his intelligence in the way he links with the rest of his team mates, as well as putting up healthy shot and xG numbers. Sterling and Jackson are basically Chelsea’s entire goalscoring hope until Christopher Nkunku returns, so they really need them to fire.

• So about that walking boot, eh Ange? Tottenham continued to be the team they’ve shown to be the first two weeks, with James Maddison (18) continuing to pull the strings. Destiny Udogie (16.75) has a clear hold on the LB spot for Spurs and he’s taken to it like a duck to water. And we’re not falling for your “oh he might be injured” shtick two weeks in a row, Spurs. He’s a set and forget until further notice. It was also the second fantasy relevant week in a row for Pape Matar Sarr (13.5) although this week was boosted by an assist, which covered for an early withdrawal. Fun fact: Sarr currently sits 3rd in SOT / 90 in the entire league. Yes, it’s the effect of a small sample, but it shows that he’s got the freedom to attack. He’s also got really nice fixtures coming up. I like him a lot as a streamer, given he’s still got low roster percentages. I’m a bit worried about Richarlison (1), but lets see if he can get going with fixtures against Burnley and Sheffield United in the next three games. Bournemouth I’m just going to not acknowledge too much until their physios get their good players on the field.

• In a battle between Wolves and Everton, you could almost guarantee that the highest scoring player would be a goalkeeper. Jose Sa (29.75) had a massive day, consigning Everton to a second defeat in three games where they’ll probably feel they should’ve scored. They failed to convert any of their four big chances, even without starting Neal Maupay. It’s really worrying for Everton that they couldn’t make any impact against Fulham or Wolves. They need Harrison and McNeil back and straight up to form. On the Wolves side of things, other than Sa, we also saw Pedro Neto (19) continue his ‘Comeback Player of the Year’ campaign (I won’t say it every week, I promise) and a first league goal for Sasa Kalajdzic (11) who came off the bench to make an impact in the 4 minutes of regular time he played. Given he probably should’ve won a penalty in GW1, we are seeing this as a positive sign. We just need to see those minutes ramp up and our outlandish Wolves pre-season prediction could come true!

• When you’re behind after one minute to a goal like that, you could be forgiven for wondering what on Earth happened. I expressed a bit of Arsenal doubt on occasion in pre-season, but this very must wasn’t Arsenal being bad. It was just Arsenal not making the most of their chances in a way that they didn’t really do last year. The upshot was that there weren’t many Fantrax relevant performances (the ever-reliable Bukayo Saka apart) from Arsenal. There’s no galaxy-brain take where dropping points is good. But also, they won’t lose many games where they get 3xG to the opposition’s 0.6. It wasn’t all that more exciting on the Fantrax side for Fulham either, despite two goals. It was arguably more of a question of who didn’t play than who did for the West-Londoners, with Willian missing out and popular-waiver add Adama Traore only managing 18 minutes off the bench. They’ve managed to collect 4 points from some pretty tepid performances, which they should be delighted with, but it’s City next and you should probably avoid starting Fulham players there unless you really have to.

• We could write more about Manchester United’s dysfunction. But we won’t. It’s still early and they might figure it out. Instead, we’ll talk about Nottingham Forest. We were fairly bullish on their prospects this Summer, but we were arguably far too down on Taiwo Ayoniwi (14.5). He doesn’t do a huge amount other than score goals. But he’s scored in all 7 of his last Premier League games. Forest are also looking to add perennial Overthinking Football favourite Callum Hudson-Odoi to provide service (and are rumoured to be adding Wilfried Ndidi in the middle of the park). More service and a more stable base feel like positive things for Taiwo’s prospects. He isn’t going to continue to be worth a goal a game, and there’ll almost definitely be some blanks. But he looks set to more than return on his draft day price.

• In the Summer, both Brentford and Crystal Palace previews focused understandably on attackers who would not be playing. Ivan Toney’s ban, Michael Olise’s injury, Wilf Zaha’s transfer. All reasons to be nervous for these two. And yet, they’ve both started really well and it’s maybe not a surprise that the spoils were even. Joachim Anderson (34.75) was definitely the headline grabber this week (and should have been on your roster after we highlighted him in GW1!). But we should shout out Jordan Ayew (19) who is quietly putting together a very good season for Roy Hodgson. Fueled by a pair of assists, he’s been in double figures in two of his three games this season. With Wolves and Fulham in his next three fixtures, he’s really not a bad forward option to have on your roster at the moment. Consider putting an “offer him out” pin in your calendar for three Gameweek’s time, though.

• It doesn’t matter what possession based system you set up, you can still get Moyes’d. Brighton learned that the hard way this week. I think this is the case of a few things being true. West Ham were not as bad as their results last year. And Brighton have turned over £160m of midfield and replaced them nominally with a pair of free transfers in James Milner (deputising at RB for 2 points) and Mo Dahoud who did not feature. Brighton will probably not be quite as good as they were last year, but they’re still a good team who will win a very healthy amount of games. West Ham have added Mohammed Kudus to the side, look to have a good balance this year, but still probably need depth to cover Michail Antonio (18.5) who, despite bullying Chelsea and Brighton back to back, is almost definitely not going to play 30+ games at this point in his career.

• We asked if there was any reason for optimism in our preview. And then Sheffield United scored against City. It took a moment of madness from ex-Blades defender Kyle Walker (9.25) to create the opportunity, but it was well taken and robbed City’s defenders and keeper of any value. This is always the risk with City and it’s why we don’t recommend rostering any of their defenders long term. Further up the field, we talked about him on our Big Questions post already, Julian Alvarez (15.5) has gone from the 6th guy drafted in this City lineup to one of the key cogs in the City machine. He had another 4 KP, 3 SOT and drew a penalty today. He is seemingly one of this year’s draft bargains, but don’t rule out a vintage-Pep rotation out of the team at some point. That’s just the nature of things at City.

• Burnley had 57% of the ball on Sunday afternoon. They had 500+ passes. They turned it into 0.7 xG (almost half of which came on a single Jay Rodriguez chance right at the end). It’s fair to say Aston Villa did a job on them. Going in at HT, they’d had just two pot shots from range, whilst Villa had scored twice, courtesy of Matty Cash (30), and put up 1.89 xG already. It was really the Moussa Diaby (22) points out there again, with the dynamic attacker looking like both a draft and real-life bargain by the week. When we talked about him in the Summer, we projected him to Arsenal. We’re so glad his agent wasn’t listening. They get Liverpool next, who will have to make changes in defence (more on that in a moment). No reason to be considering fading any of the Villa attack for that one at the moment.

• So Darwin Nunez (19.5) does exist. Scoring 2 goals from about 0.5 xG. Just the kind of clinical finishing that the Uruguayan has made his calling card in the Premier League. Jokes aside, Liverpool went down to ten and somehow improved once they’d made the substitutions to bring on Diogo Jota (8.5), Nunez, and Harvey Elliott. In the case of Harvey, he’s a good player. And he’s far more settled at Liverpool than any of the midfielders ahead of him, so that one we might write off in terms of any sort of longer term impact for now. With the forwards, I’ll confess to being stumped as to why Cody Gakpo (4.5) remains preferred by Klopp. He presses, sure. He can sort of drop into midfield, but the trade off doesn’t seem worth it. The best thing you can say for Liverpool right now is that they don’t look particularly good, but they’ve got 7 points despite playing Newcastle and Chelsea. That gives you more time to sort things out.

• On the other side of the ball, Newcastle seemed to find themselves a bit caught in two minds when Liverpool went down to 10 men, already a goal behind. They did have chances, but they didn’t really ever commit additional men forward to try to get the second goal. We’d probably say that’s just part of the natural transition from being a mid-table to a top-level team and they’ll get there in time. Sven Botman (5.75) coming off with an injury is not what they’ll want to see, even with Lewis Hall having arrived to add to the defensive group. Also, in the interests of fairness, I’ve spoken at length that I am not particularly enamoured with what Anthony Gordon (24.5) has shown to date on a football pitch. On Sunday he was good. That needs to go from being the exception to being the regular level if he’s to justify his price tag and keep Harvey Barnes out of the XI, but there’s at least some promise shown!

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