The Overthinking Roundup: GW11

In which we see a number of the underdogs take points, see Arsenal stumble on Tyneside in a top of the table clash, and anoint a new member of the 50+ points club

Welcome to the Overthinking Roundup.

This is our guide to the week that was. In it, we go game by game to break down the notable stories and performances, before diving into transaction advice for our Paid Subscribers.

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Fulham 0 - 1 Manchester United

It’s an old football cliché that ‘the mark of a good team is one that wins when playing badly.’ I can’t see that being much consolation to United fans, after another brush with dropped points against a lower half team. Bruno Fernandes (21) is a good footballer and, with his late goal, earned United three much-needed, but not particularly well-earned, points. It’s not the first time he’s done that and really he’s the lone bright spot from a United perspective this season for Fantrax. The mood around the club feels strange at the moment. What might pass for feel-good narratives in other seasons (a return to form for Harry Maguire (18.25) in recent weeks, for example) just seem to continually be washed out to sea by an undertow of negativity. This week brought news that Marcus Rashford was punished by the manager for attending a birthday celebration and the forward missed this game altogether with a reported injury in training. There’s just one thing after another for this group. They face Luton next.

Fulham played quite well, created more than Manchester United overall but lacked true cutting edge. It’s almost like they sold a forward who could get goals in this system and replaced him with multiple players that can’t. They’ll be disappointed by this result, which would be a wild thing to say removed from the context of this specific game and season. Fantrax-wise, the day wasn’t a bust for Andreas Pereira (15) who posted his biggest score of the season so far. He has had a more muted campaign this time out so it’s nice to see those who drafted him rewarded. It was also a good day for Alex Iwobi (8), who has now put together two Fantrax relevant starts in a row in his new role for Fulham. His rostered percentage is relatively low, despite him being drafted in the vast majority of leagues, so you may find him on waiver wires in your leagues. The next fixture for Fulham is away to Aston Villa. It’s not a great matchup, but it’s also not a “you can’t even think about starting him” matchup. And he gets Wolves immediately after that.

Brentford 3 - 2 West Ham

We talked about this one in the preview, calling this one of the more interesting ties of the weekend. And boy did it turn out to be. We’ll start with the away side here, who were most able to play their natural counter-punch game. There are very few sides coached as well as West Ham. It’s wild to us that David Moyes has seemingly spent the last 18 months under constant speculation about his job. That said, he probably can’t claim too much credit for Mohammed Kudus’s (23.5) moment of brilliance. It was one of the outlier data points we called out in our preview that our projections model did not like Kudus at all, following last week’s 8 dispossession game. A goal and an assist is the perfect way to bounce-back. That said, for West Ham, it was a pretty quiet day outside of the goal involvements. Both Jarrod Bowen (14.5) and Michail Antonio (14.5) had very healthy returns—Bowen courtesy of a goal and Antonio through his assist for Kudus. Some of the other names we’re used to seeing involved were quieter. James Ward-Prowse (5) is in a run of down games following his blistering start to life at West Ham, but with Nottingham Forest, Burnley, and Crystal Palace in his next three games, we would like to think he can return to form soon. It’s also a chance for West Ham defenders to return to value.

Shifting to talk about Brentford, there were changes to recent starting elevens as Neal Maupay (15) and Frank Onyeka (15) came into the lineup. They ended up as the two highest scoring Fantrax players for Brentford, again courtesy of a goal and an assist. I imagine they were not started by many outside of desperation punts. Thankfully, there were pretty good outings for Mathias Jensen (11.5), Bryan Mbeumo (10.5), and Ethan Pinnock (7), all of whom likely were started. Jensen has stepped up his game this year from being a solid streamer option to an every-week starter in terms of Points per Start. His xFpts lag slightly behind his production levels (9.21 xFpts to 11.35 PPS going into this weekend) but it’s not dramatic and either way, given he was available at an incredibly low price at (or after) draft day, he’s presumably making many Fantrax managers very happy this season. Brentford are about to go into two of the tougher matchups going, with a trip to Liverpool and a visit from Arsenal in their next two games. Probably time to return Neal Maupay to the waiver wire for the 11% of you that do have him.

Burnley 0 - 2 Crystal Palace

If I’m honest, this one passed me by in real-time on Saturday. But on rewatch, there’s a fair bit here to talk through. Firstly, I think it’s time we just accept the new reality that Joachim Andersen (16) is going to rival Kieran Trippier to be the first defender drafted next season. More seriously, the big news in this game was the return of Eberechi Eze (9.5). If you just looked at the top level points stat-line, you might come away assuming Eze started. But he did his damage in just 30 minutes of action. He truly is a gift from above to this Palace team and his assist to Tyrick Mitchell (21.25) vaulted the left-back to the top of the points rankings for Palace this week. Mitchell is an excellent defender but rarely troubles the top-end of the points tallies. If you started him, well done. Sell him now in case someone’s not paid attention to the other weeks of the season. The last piece of Palace news to talk about involves Michael Olise, who is still not back available. Going into the weekend, Roy Hodgson confirmed that he’s still being carefully managed in training and can’t fully join sessions. Considering he was originally hoping to return after the first-International Break of the season, it’s not the update you wanted to hear if you were stashing him all this time. Our money would be on him not returning until December. That said, he’s such a talent that you really can’t cut on him now.

For Burnley, they once again had the majority of possession in a game (68% to 32%), had the most shots (17 to 4), and a massive set piece advantage (12 corners to 1). But it was all pretty tame. 17 shots resulting in 1.12 xG is not great. And the fact that they held Palace to 4 shots would be good, were it not for the fact that those four shots were worth 1.30 xG. It’s really tough to win games like this. There were upside days for Johann Gudmundsson (14.5) and Josh Brownhill (11), but, once again, these performances probably fall into the “that helps nobody” category in the majority of leagues. Both were heavily involved in set pieces, with Gudmundsson taking 7 corners and Brownhill taking 5. That’s basically the story for the majority of their production. At a stretch this gives value in the right matchup. But it’s certainly not going to return value next week away at the Emirates.

Everton 1 - 1 Brighton

The headline question in the Preview this week was whether Everton had anything to fear in facing Brighton this weekend. This battle of 9th vs 10th in the xGD/90 table looked as well-matched as the stats would suggest, though this ended up being a game of few true chances. Brighton, predictably, dominated the ball. But you got the impression that this was by design from Sean Dyche, especially once his side took the lead courtesy of Vitalii Mykolenko (17.75). Mykolenko in past seasons has been a guy you wanted to just leave on waiver wires. This season he’s been a fairly consistently usable player, gaining both a floor (as Everton haven’t been all that terrible) and a ceiling (as Everton have occasionally been good). Outside of Mykolenko, most of the other Everton players suffered from game-script here (although we will gripe that if Mykolenko hadn’t needed two attempts to score his chance, Dwight McNeil (4) would’ve gotten the assist he deserved). Until this point, Everton attackers had been fairly consistent, so we’re going to chalk this up to just a bad day at the office for Fantrax. Sean Dyche does not care about our Fantrax teams. Never has. Never will.

The Seagulls had every chance to embarrass me here, having stated in the preview that they look to me like a mid-table side, rather than a European spot challenger. They didn’t. They have two wins in ten games in all competitions (against Bournemouth and Ajax) and just a single Clean Sheet. They’re not difficult to play against at the moment, which is not something you’d have said about last season’s Brighton side. Clearly a big part of this is injury-driven. Julio Enciso was our hot-tip to breakout and they lost him within 7 days of the season starting. Solly March has joined him in the long-term absentee group. Pervis Estupinan has missed all of October and is not yet ready to return. Evan Ferguson (2) is, as far as we know, still managing an ongoing leg issue. But really this just looks like one fire-sale too many for Brighton at the moment, with new recruits who are either not ready or not able to step into the shoes of the players that have departed. Kaoru Mitoma (12.5) and Pascal Gross (2.5) are the two names we still trust every week. That’s a significant drop from last year where this side had five or six every-week Fantrax starters no matter the opponent. As opportunities to right the form-book go, Sheffield United at home is right at the top of the list, so we hope to see another win here or the real panic might start to set in.

Manchester City 6 - 1 Bournemouth

Welcome to the 50+ point club Jeremy Doku (52). With a goal and 4 assists, the young winger terrorised Bournemouth all afternoon. There were elements of good fortune to it, given he actually only racked up 0.36 xA from his 5 Chances Created. But, make no mistake, this was a hugely impressive day for the young man. He was popping up all over the pitch to find new angles of attack against an outmatched Bournemouth defence. He had assists from the LW and RW areas, scored from inside the box, ended up with an assist as his shot from outside the box hit Manuel Akanji (12), and even got one assist from the LB zone for good measure. We profiled Doku when he signed and one stat that we highlighted was that in France “approximately every 45 minutes of play, he was creating a goal through his dribbling.” The only knock we had for Doku in that profile was the competition for minutes ahead of him. With a combination of a Jack Grealish injury to start the year and his own good-form, he’s managed to skip the growing pains we often see with year-one Guardiola attackers. Any FAAB spent on him looks excellent value. We do still think he’ll end up splitting time a lot more once Grealish is fully healthy (and wouldn’t be surprised if Jack is in against Chelsea next week), but clearly he’s an elite Fantrax player already in the games he starts. It’s also worth calling out Bernardo Silva (30). We’ve said it before, but it seems like every single year his draft stocks get depressed by talk of a move, only for him to remain and put out a number of games like this. The other two things of note involve Erling Haaland (2), who was withdrawn at half-time with an ankle injury, and Julian Alvarez (9). Neither ended up on the goal or assist sheet, which seems unthinkable given City hit 6. The injury is the only thing to worry about, but initial reports suggest it’s not too bad. Assuming they’re both available, you’ll plug both in next weekend.

I’ve got little to say about Bournemouth. The only positive of the last few weeks was Alex Scott (2), but he left the game before half-time with a knee injury. The injuries have been brutal, but we’re over a quarter of the way through the season and Andoni Iraola seems to have no answer to how to set this group of available names up to get points. Something will have to change here (and soon) or they’ll be at real risk of dropping out of the Premier League again. It’s Newcastle next, so things certainly don’t get any easier.

Sheffield United 2 - 1 Wolves

We all knew that Wolves might struggle without Pedro Neto. I doubt many of us thought it would be losing three points to Sheffield United bad. Sasa Kalajdzic (2.5) got the start we’d been clamouring for but did very little. In fact, almost all of the Wolves starters did very little, bar Hwang Hee-Chan (16), who got an assist late in the game from one of his four Key Passes. We were worried about Hwang’s point production without the service of Neto. He didn’t do anything noteworthy shot-wise this game, but he did take up the creative mantle somewhat. If anything, the lack of shots in this game leaves us more nervous about his ongoing production. The TLDR of this is that Wolves looked a good streamer spot this week. But they very much were not. Until Neto is back, that should rule them out as a team to stream from until further notice.

Continuing this week’s trend of “goals that help no one,” hands up if you started either of Cameron Archer (13.5) or Oliver Norwood (15.5) this week! It looks like some managers did, as both went up in rostered percentage this weekend (albeit by tiny percentage values). Without the goals, neither had particularly notable days and, despite this result, we return to our default position of “look elsewhere" to get your streamers as they face Brighton next.

Newcastle 1 - 0 Arsenal

This was by far the biggest fixture of the week when you look at the slate. Arguably only Monday Night Football comes close. I wouldn’t say it lived up to the billing excitement-wise, which is a worrying trend in the bigger games this season. I have no doubt fans of both Arsenal and Newcastle could not care less whether I’m enjoying their teams during these purple patches in their clubs’ respective histories. But it certainly seems like the default big-game tactic at the moment is to try to really restrict the amount of actual football that gets played and to hope that one of the low-quality chances in the game bounces your way. It worked for Arsenal against Manchester City, it didn’t work for them here.

Arsenal created 0.57 xG in this game. We talked in the Preview about why you probably did not want to start Eddie Nketiah (2) in this one. But we weren’t expecting Bukayo Saka (4) to be so stifled. He looks exhausted and he’s surely due a rest soon. Though with a mid-week game in Sevilla coming up, we’re concerned he won’t get it. Gabriel Martinelli (18) was the main man Fantrax-wise for the Gunners, credited with 5 Key Passes, but they were mostly very low quality chances, though he did take 2 corners. All that said, this was a first league loss of the season for Arsenal, who won’t panic too much. Burnley next week represents a great chance to bounce-back for Arsenal but rotation could well bite, given it’s one of the easier matchups going.

For Newcastle fans this was presumably an incredibly satisfying afternoon. A game played with fight and energy, settled by a close-range finish from Anthony Gordon (13) after a well won (legal?) aerial duel from Joelinton (18). It’s great to see Joelinton back in the lineup after his injury and, although we’re still not getting carried away by Anthony Gordon, he’s undeniably continuing to return goal-linked value on a regular basis. The only negative for the Magpies was Dan Burn (5.75) exiting with a back injury. He was replaced by Tino Livramento (2) who also looked great in cup action last week. With Bournemouth up next, we’d happily start everyone in black and white next week, so Burn’s injury will be one to watch.

Nottingham Forest 2 - 0 Aston Villa

This was almost the upset of the weekend (more on that shortly). Nottingham Forest set out to right the wrongs of last weekend’s loss to Liverpool, turning back to the same playbook that paid off so handsomely at Stamford Bridge. There were early warnings that Forest were out to attack the space behind Villa’s defensive line, but Unai Emery’s side really only have one mode of operation: high-line and high-pace. So it wasn’t a total shock to see Anthony Elanga (3.5) sprinting behind Matty Cash (0) in the fifth minute. More of a surprise was when the eventual cut-back was squared by Harry Toffolo (27.5) to Ola Aina (24.5) who hit one of the sweetest strikes of a ball you’ll see this season into the bottom left corner from range. Given it was the 5th minute, you’d have been forgiven for assuming you were looking at a bump in the road for Villa. And maybe that would have been the story most days. But an Emi Martinez (-2) handling error gifted Orel Mangala (15) a goal immediately after half time and, despite taking 9 shots in that second half, Villa didn’t really ever come close to getting back even. For Forest, it was another good result against a big side. That Liverpool game apart, they’ve remained competitive in ties against Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Aston Villa now. They get West Ham next. It might not be pretty, but we’d imagine Forest will be competitive in that one too.

All of the above is not to say that the day was totally fruitless Fantrax-wise for Aston Villa. The points system doesn’t care about xG or shot efficiency. Lucas Digne (16.75) got 4 more Key Passes to add to his season total, as did Moussa Diaby (11.5). Digne is going to be an interesting one to keep an eye on moving forward as Alex Moreno found himself back in the squad this week. Moreno has been an Emery favourite in the past, and it’ll be interesting to see if he displaces a resurgent Digne from the starting XI. We also saw the continuation of the Douglas Luiz (4) home / away split phenomenon. Don’t worry Fantrax managers, he’s got Fulham at home next week.

Luton Town 1 - 1 Liverpool

And, saving the biggest upset till last, we look to Kenilworth Road. Luton Town were three added-time minutes away from a historic victory against a Liverpool side that were equal parts wasteful and unlucky to be facing an inspired Thomas Kaminski (9). The xGOT faced by the Luton goalkeeper was 2.42 by Opta’s count, yet he kept Liverpool at bay for most of the game. It would only be telling half a story, though, to not mention Liverpool’s own profligacy, as they put chance after chance off target. Darwin Nunez (9.5) had perhaps the biggest of the chances, putting a 0.48 xG opportunity from close range over the crossbar. But Mo Salah (8) was also in on the act a few times. It looked like it might just be one of those days as added time ticked away until Luis Diaz (12) converted his lone chance of the day into the late equaliser. It’s fair to say that there were a wide range of emotions watching the ball hit the net as a fan: feeling happy for Diaz, in the context he’s having to play in, contrasted with feeling disappointed for Luton, who were denied what would have been three hugely vital points in their battle to survive in the division. Had Liverpool left with nothing, they could probably feel pretty aggrieved, given they put up 2.85 xG on the day. But that’s part of the Darwin Nunez (0.90 xG) experience at times. I’m pretty open that I love the chaos of it. Given Jurgen Klopp has now started Nunez pretty much every game he’s been fit, I can’t see him coming out of the lineup for the visit of Brentford and I’m looking forward to the wild ride continuing there.

Though the (non-goalkeeper) headlines for Luton will go to Tahith Chong (12) and Issa Kabore (15.25) because of the goal, the performance that caught the eye most was that of Ross Barkley (10), who has now gone over 10 points in 3 of his 4 starts this season. Luton run everything through him and although we’re not sure it’s a particularly great plan for winning Premier League games in 2023, it’s certainly got Fantrax upside. His next chance to show us what he can do is with a trip to Manchester United. Given those three starts I mentioned were against Liverpool, Aston Villa, and West Ham, we’re not sure there’s any specific good reason to fade him there if he starts.

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Another week, another set of transactions for our subscribers. As usual, we’re not going to shout out long-term injuries or suspensions in here. We recommend using a resource like PremierInjuries to keep on track of potential stash-ahead guys as we get closer to their expected availability dates.