The Overthinking Roundup: Gameweek 13
In which Doku always seemed to be dribbling, Newcastle always seemed to be scoring and the Manchester United juggernaught rolled on.
Hello and welcome back to the Overthinking Football Roundup for Gameweek 13.
This is our guide to the week that was. Thanks to the Holiday schedule, it’s a slightly adjusted format this week. Paid Subscribers received our Transaction advice separately to get ahead of Waivers. So this is just our game by game summaries to break down the notable stories and performances. Back to the normal format next week.
As ever, if you enjoy what we do, please share and encourage others to subscribe!
Manchester City 1 - 1 Liverpool
Though you imagine neither manager would be particularly fond of having the early-shift this weekend, following the Internationals, this was as mouth-watering a tie to start the Gameweek as you could possibly ask for. It was maybe not the full-blockbuster that this matchup has been in previous years, but it was still pretty engrossing for most of the day. City were the more threatening by the stat-sheet but to our eyes this looked fairly even for most of the game.
That’s probably not a whole lot of consolation to managers who started Liverpool players today, outside of the duo involved in the equalising goal. Unsurprisingly, having published an article saying that Trent Alexander-Arnold (15.5) is not offering the same goal threat in his new role, he popped up with a goal on Saturday. The commentators curse is very real in both directions. He and Mo Salah (15.5) were the only two Liverpool outfielders to score more than 3 points, so it really wasn’t a banner day for anyone else. But, as usual, there were quite a few threatening moments from Liverpool in attack that just didn’t quite come off. Darwin Nunez (2) had a very Darwin Nunez sort of game, in that he looked like he might make something happen pretty often, but only hit the target once from his 4 shots. An off-day against Manchester City is hardly a shock, so we wouldn’t adjust our opinions down on Liverpool assets anyway, but their pleasant fixture schedule will almost definitely see Liverpool names right at the top of the projections again this week. The only downside is the potential loss of Diogo Jota (2.5) and Alisson (8.25) to injury. We will have to watch closely to see how long they’re both going to be out, but initial reports on Jota don’t seem great. Losing Alisson in particular would be a massive blow to Liverpool. Neither backup option offers anything close to the Brazilian so if you’re fretting on his fitness, after this fixture run it’s potentially worth looking at other streaming goalkeepers on the waiver wire long term.
Manchester City did Manchester City things. Jeremy Doku (23) had 12 Successful Take-Ons. Even by his standards, that is a large number of Take-Ons. He also threw in 4 Key Passes to really bump things up. He’s been nothing short of phenomenal for Fantrax any time he starts. That puts him in good company next to Erling Haaland (16) who had a pretty typical Haaland day. 5 Shots, 2 Shots on Target, 0.73 xG and a Goal. He’s good. The remaining City players had more fruitful days than their Liverpool counterparts but there weren’t particularly many other standouts, other than (another consecutive) rare non-Clean Sheet double-figure pointer from Nathan Ake (13.25). He’s still not someone you should aspire to roster, though. They get fun matchups with Tottenham and then Villa in their next two. The attacking potential is large in those two.
Burnley 1 - 2 West Ham
Football is a remarkably cold and unsentimental game at times. Burnley looked ready to claim the three points in this one well into the last ten minutes. They’d held a Jarrod Bowen-less West Ham to very little and, crucially, had managed to take the lead themselves, through a Jay Rodriguez (17) penalty. I know, no one started him. We can still enjoy a nostalgic reminder of a once-relevant Fantrax forward, right? Luca Koleosho (10.5) was also a positive stream this week off the back of his penalty win, but there wasn’t a lot of substance there to hang hopes of future hauls. He looks very talented but still very raw. The main man for Burnley was once again Johann Gudmundsson (15.5) who had 4 Chances Created, including taking 2 Corners. He’s not someone you’re comfortable starting every week but as a desperation start, he’s the one Burnley asset we don’t mind recommending.
With 5 minutes of normal time remaining, though, West Ham flipped the script on Burnley. Mohammed Kudus (25), who had conceded the penalty earlier in the game, redeemed himself with 2 Assists. The first was a dangerous cross across the six yard box that Dara O’Shea (5.5) was unfortunate to deflect into his own net. The second a deep-ball to the back post that Tomas Soucek (14.5) was first to. It was another reminder that Kudus has that ability to make something out of very little even as he continues to adapt his play to a new league. There was also another very solid outing from Lucas Paqueta (13) who is typically one of the safest midfielders in the entire game, despite an uncharacteristic down month in October. West Ham will continue to funnel points through their attackers, hopefully with Bowen back before long, as they face Crystal Palace, Tottenham and Fulham in their next three.
Luton 2 - 1 Crystal Palace
The full return from injury for Michael Olise (25.5) would be the headline here 99% of the time. But Luton aren’t particularly new to doings things against the odds and with Jacob Brown’s (13) late goal, they stole the front page from Palace’s goalscorer. This was a massive result for them, lifting them four points ahead of Sheffield United (and 5 above Everton). Now it’s likely they might have to catch Bournemouth to have a real chance of staying up, but days like this certainly do them no harm. The xG was all in Palace’s favour, but having twice taken the lead, Luton were not bad value for this result. Because their goals came from two substitutes, it’s yet another set of goals that didn’t hugely help Fantrax managers in most leagues. But the assist for Carlton Morris (8.5) would likely have helped managers in deeper leagues and Chiedozie Ogbene (13) is looking increasingly streamable as he settles into the league. Luton get a run of Brentford, Arsenal and Manchester City now, which is about as tough as you can ask for. But we wouldn’t blame anyone for adding him to the Watch List and keeping him there for friendlier fixture streaming purposes.
Palace get one piece of good news (the return of Olise) and immediately face potentially terrible news in the early exit of Eberechi Eze (7.5). We will have to see what the news comes back with later this week but it would be a real blow to once again see Palace reduced to just one of their two main creative players. They get a difficult (though short) trip to West Ham next and Bournemouth to follow. With Olise just back, don’t be overly surprised if they manage him somewhat through the next two weeks of action to prevent injury recurrence.
Newcastle 4 - 1 Chelsea
For these two clubs, this has been a tale of two injury trajectories. Chelsea started the season missing a significant chunk of their (thankfully for them) over-sized squad. At the latest count, they’re down to just six absentees, with two more (Christopher Nkunku and Romeo Lavia) close to returning. At Newcastle, they’ve seen things turn the other way of late. Going into the last Gameweek, they had 13 players unavailable through injury and suspension. You might not have known it based on the way this game went.
At half time, things looked pretty even. But it very quickly ran away from Chelsea in the second-half. Set piece defending has plagued Chelsea all season and it was the story once again, with Jamaal Lascelles (11.25) popping up to put the Magpies back in the lead before a pair of calamitous moments for Chelsea saw Thiago Silva (-1.5) gift Joelinton (12.5) one of the easiest chances he’ll get all season and Reece James (-1.75) baited into a second yellow card challenge on Anthony Gordon (19.5). This game felt like Chelsea’s year in a microcosm: a first half that showed a lot of promise, undone by mistakes and inconsistency. The one piece of upside for Chelsea was the full league return of Benoit Badiashile (0.75) but even his usually assured play was tested at times.
A running bit for me is to point out just how good at football Bruno Guimaraes (5) is. It’s definitely not the hottest take. It’s also not necessarily true that it translates to Fantrax consistently. But the difference with him in and out of this side is night and day. That said, outside of the goals this wasn’t a massive stats-day for Newcastle. They will not care. It was also nice to see another solid outing for Lewis Miley (8.5) who is making the absences of Sandro Tonali and Elliot Anderson easier to bear for Eddie Howe. They get Manchester United in Gameweek 14 in the next test of this depleted side.
Nottingham Forest 2 - 3 Brighton
Before we get to the specifics of this game, a moment to talk about possibly the most frustrating player in all of Fantrax this season: Joao Pedro (27.5). Once again, Joao did not start for Brighton. Once again he came off the bench (in this case very early) and looked lively, getting two goals (one penalty). The explosiveness is there to see, so he’s hard to drop. And, if Ansu Fati (3) misses time with his muscle injury, there’s an increased likelihood of starting opportunities. But regardless, we are halfway through the season and sadly he’s got more “dead points” than real ones for his Fantrax managers. Hard to describe him as anything other than a bust, given his draft price. The rest of the game was pretty familiar for Brighton, who were able to score, but could not stop an opposition from racking up the chances either, though Lewis Dunk (-3.75) made things easier for Forest in that regard with his second-half red card. We’ve said it multiple times now, we don’t really trust many of this Brighton side at this point other than Kaoru Mitoma (who missed this tie) and Pascal Gross (28.5) who had his second biggest game of the season, courtesy of 2 Assists. They get Chelsea next and, based on how each side has looked defensively recently, it could be a goal-fest.
Forest fans learned last week that Taiwo Awoniyi is out again and potentially for multiple months. It’s a massive blow to this Forest side. With no offence meant to Chris Wood (7), it’s just not the same without Awoniyi. We won’t talk about Wood’s defending in conceding the penalty. But it’s to their credit that they were able to stay competitive in this one. Morgan Gibbs-White (35) was the big story with a Goal and an Assist to his name, but there were other positives for Forest too. We’ve said before that we’re big fans of Murillo (7.5), and to hit 7.5 despite conceding three goals is a really good output for a defender. This game also saw the return of Callum Hudson-Odoi (11) from his hamstring injury and it was his run across Lewis Dunk that led to the penalty and dismissal. If Forest are to overcome Awoniyi’s injury, they need all of their other attackers to step up, so that has to be seen as a real boost. They face Everton next week at home.
Sheffield United 1 - 3 Bournemouth
This was a game with massive implications for both sides in real football terms. For Sheffield United in particular, this felt must-win. They did not. They didn’t come close, really. And the end result is that they now sit 7 points behind Bournemouth and 4 behind Luton. As silly as it sounds, those distances are starting to look cavernous based on how they’ve played so far. For Bournemouth, this was a much-needed shot in the arm and it came (as it often has in the last 18 months) on the back of a Marcus Tavernier (37.5) points haul. His 2 Goals and 3 Chances Created comfortably out-paced everyone else in this game and were pretty well deserved from his 1.41 xG + xA. He’s been incredibly consistent in Fantrax and, despite multiple signings in his position over the last few windows, he seems nailed on when healthy. It was a day where most of the Bournemouth attackers fed, so it was maybe a little strange to see Dominic Solanke (2) finishing with so few points, but it was just an unfortunate day, given he still had 4 Shots for 0.65 xG. They just ended up off-target. He’s still the second safest start on this team after Tavernier on a weekly basis. A visit from Aston Villa next week isn’t the most appealing matchup but Villa do have some defensive frailties so Solanke is likely fine to start in most league-sizes.
Picking Sheffield United players is not a good idea most weeks. There are basically three names that are various levels of usable. Firstly you have Wes Foderingham (9.5) who is usually busy enough to still be relevant even when his team lose badly. Then you have Gustavo Hamer (2) who is aggressive in his passing choices, which gives him the possibility of attacking contributions on the rare occasions Sheffield United do score. Then you’ve got Oli McBurnie (17) who doesn’t tend to score all that often but who has a ghost point floor, demonstrated best by his 7 Aerial Duels Won in 45 minutes. It’s not pretty, but it does offer something vaguely dependable. Given their next matchup is away at Burnley, it’s not a horrible time to roll out any of the three names above. You’ll want to see them (except for maybe McBurnie), back on the wire before Liverpool turn up on the 6th, though.
Brentford 0 - 1 Arsenal
1-0 to the Arsenal, huh? With the points shared between City and Liverpool, this late-earned London derby win was enough to lift Mikel Arteta back to the top of the Premier League. Once again, it was not pretty. I am very confident that Mikel Arteta is not looking for pretty. It was a fairly unlikely hero for Arsenal, with Kai Havertz (11.5) coming off the bench to finish Bukayo Saka’s (19.5) cross with a back-post header. While we’re happy for the thus far disappointing German, we really don’t want to listen to any more of that terrible Waka Waka adaptation sung in his honor—you can do better, Gunners! Outside of the Clean Sheet for defenders, there wasn’t loads else. Saka is just a dream for Fantrax managers and I’m running out of creative ways to say it. It was also nice to see Gabriel Jesus (4.5) get through 65 minutes on his return from injury. He’ll have better days against teams less defensively capable than Brentford. The West-Londoners played a five-man defence and it was pretty effective at frustrating Arsenal.
Unfortunately for them, it had a similar impact on their own attackers. Both Yoanne Wissa (4) and Bryan Mbeumo (7) were fairly limited in their chances in this game and really only the reliable defensive duo of Ben Mee (10) and Ethan Pinnock (9) offered their managers above-replacement level output. It’s hard to be overly judgmental of Thomas Frank’s decision to be pragmatic in this game, given how close it came to keeping Arsenal out, but it’ll thankfully be a different story when Luton visit next weekend.
Tottenham 1 - 2 Aston Villa
The James Maddison-less stretch continues to hurt Tottenham, as they’ve now slumped to three consecutive losses. With this one, they have now fallen outside of the Top-4 spots. And the run does not get a whole lot easier for them in the next few. Looking at the lineup for Spurs here, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was probably an in-form Aston Villa beating up on a second-string Spurs side. Seeing Giovanni Lo Celso (20), Bryan Gil (8) and their makeshift centre-back duo would certainly not have inspired confidence before-hand. But it wasn’t exactly like that. Whilst it’s definitely true that Spurs struggled to prevent Villa making chances, they were reasonably effective themselves, creating 4 Big Chances and having over 2.34 xG in this game (their actual goal only contributing 0.05 of that xG, coming courtesy of a long-range strike from Lo Celso off a set piece). They just weren’t able to convert. Or more specifically, they (Son Heung-min) just weren’t able to convert from an onside position. Both Dejan Kulusevski (17) and Brennan Johnson (7) finished with around 0.6 xG from 3 shots. That neither scored is unfortunate for Spurs. Kulusevski also had enough of an all-round contribution that he would’ve kept his Fantrax managers happy, though. With Manchester City coming up next, they’ll need to show a more ruthless side.
But Aston Villa rarely need a second invitation to show their ruthlessness. And the usual suspects of Ollie Watkins (12), Douglas Luiz (16) and Lucas Digne (9) were right at the heart of everything, as usual. Watkins also had a goal narrowly denied by an offside call, so was close to an even bigger afternoon. A well-taken headed goal from a set-piece also elevated Pau Torres’s (16.5) weekend and, although his matchup against Bournemouth isn’t awful, upcoming visits from Manchester City and Arsenal place him firmly back in the ‘best left as a Free Agent’ tier of players. Villa are now into the Champions League spots so those two games will be an excellent barometer of just how real this great form under Unai Emery is. For now though, they certainly look good value for their points total.
Everton 0 - 3 Manchester United
One of our long-running bits here was to count Everton’s point tally post-expected points deduction. Though that’s been somewhat ruined for us, it certainty is helpful for the Toffees, who now know that they’ve got 10 points to make back up. With both Luton and Bournemouth winning earlier in the weekend, they went into this game knowing they were 5 points out of 17th. They finished the day there, too. They probably should feel better about this one than the scoreline suggests (they won the xG battle with 2.47 to United’s 2.22), but that was courtesy of 24 shots, many of them speculative. And with the deduction, they are not in a position to celebrate “should have won” performances.
For Fantrax, the xG and the shot totals meant very little, given only 6 of the 24 were on target. There really wasn’t a lot to write home about from anyone in Blue, but James Garner (9.5) did get himself 4 Key Passes against his former club (taking 5 corners). Dominic Calvert-Lewin (7) also arguably could have seen a far bigger day for Fantrax, with 5 shots for 0.63 xG. His tally as it stands was fine (and better than the previous two games), though nothing special. But that was about it for relevant Everton assets.
Now let’s get to what most of you probably expect to read about. That overhead kick. It was truly special. But Alejandro Garnacho (13) remains a pretty hit or miss Fantrax start. He had a good chance late in the game to add another to his tally, but outside of his goal, he did basically nothing else. He’s hard to strongly recommend in most Gameweeks for that reason, especially whilst United are struggling for attacking cohesion. That being said, the role does seem to be his for the time-being, so you could certainly do worse in the streaming department. With Rasmus Hojlund unavailable to start, we saw something of a 2020 reunion, with Anthony Martial (20) leading the line ahead of Marcus Rashford (19) and Bruno Fernandes (17). The points tallies looked like their 2020-selves, too, though with penalty duties in Rashford’s hands rather than Bruno. Although we dislike this year’s trend of teams choosing to rotate their penalty takers for fairly obvious Fantrax prediction reasons, we do generally agree with giving your forwards the extra shooting opportunities for confidence reasons. I’m going to be relatively cautious predicting this as a “we’re back” level performance for United. It didn’t really look like a 3-0 win to me and Andre Onana (25.25) was worked fairly hard to keep that Clean Sheet. But optimism can be found in the return to health of Luke Shaw (10.75) and Kobbie Mainoo (7.5), both of whom played well. With Newcastle and Chelsea in the next two fixtures, this feels like an important three game run for United and we’re looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.
Fulham 3 - 2 Wolves
Fans of penalties must have loved the second-half of Monday Night’s tie between Fulham and Wolves. Writing about them isn’t all that interesting, though. To get it out of the way, Willian (25.5) and Hwang Hee-Chan (14) both had very respectable tallies as a result of the penalties. In Willian’s case in particular, I imagine it was enough to swing some matchups. And assists for Tom Cairney (12.5) and Harry Wilson (10) might have helped someone. It’s hard to imagine they were started in many leagues, though. But the main reason I want to skip around the second half penalty-fest is that the first half was a surprisingly fun watch.
Fulham probably had the better of it (they certainly did on the xG) but both sides showed that they could threaten. Early attacks from wide for Fulham were hints at what was to come when Alex Iwobi (18.5) swept in a chance in just the 7th minute. And it didn’t take Wolves all that long to answer, with Jean-Ricner Bellegarde (14) showing a nice change of direction before crossing for Matheus Cunha (12) to score. With Pedro Neto still suggested to be a couple of weeks away, Wolves will be hoping Bellegarde can replace some of his output from threatening wide positions. We’ve mentioned that we like him a few times here, but he’ll be very hard to recommend next week away at Arsenal (as will most of the Wolves attack).
Fulham have a similarly difficult proposition at the weekend, with a trip to Anfield. So it’s probably not all that important to rush to the waiver wire in search of Antonee Robinson (12.75), but he had another good ghost point performance to go along with his Assist and he remains a nice option to stream in good matchups.
That’s it for this week’s roundup. Look out for the Preview article towards the end of the week!