The Overthinking Roundup: GW29
In which a lot of teams took a break, Rodrigo Muniz fully announced himself and Sergio Reguilon saw red.
Welcome to the Overthinking Roundup for Gameweek 29, the last ahead of the International Break and a smaller game-slate.
But regardless of the number of games, 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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Burnley 2 - 1 Brentford
Other results going their way prevented this weekend being a total wash for Brentford. And news of Nottingham Forest’s four-point PSR deduction will be music to their ears. Even with that help, Brentford just cannot put distance between themselves and the relegation spots, no matter how good the underlying numbers say that they are. Today the villain was Sergio Reguilon (-7) who didn’t even make it ten minutes in before he conceded a penalty and saw red. Not a good way to make your comeback to the side. But it’s exactly the sort of luck that Burnley need. And with the man advantage, Burnley had chances to put the game away in the first half. David Datro Fofana (13.5) in particular will be glad his second-half goal helps erase the memory of his big miss in the first half and he had another moment that could easily have led to a goal when he slipped after pinching the ball from the Brentford keeper. Had he kept his footing, it would’ve likely been an open-goal opportunity. It’s not always refined with Fofana, but there’s no doubt he’s elevated Burnley’s attacking threat significantly. The other notable thing for Burnley was that they brought in Arijanet Muric (11.5) in goal. On this showing, he’s unlikely to be dropped. His save from Ivan Toney (8.5) in the second-half in particular was a stand-out moment. The three points bring Burnley to within 5 points of Luton and, after their PSR penalty, 4 points of Forest. With the likely points deduction, the target is most likely just being 6 points better than Luton over the last 9 Games. It’s a big ask. But we’ve seen stranger things happen. A visit to Chelsea will see them having to make-do without Fofana against a side who saw them off pretty comfortably last time they met. But Chelsea are a strange team who are often generous to teams that can play on the break. We await that one with interest.
For Brentford, there’s not a huge amount to say, given the were down to 10 for almost the entire game. They were close to fighting back in the second half, even if they were fortunate to still be in the game as the half-time whistle blew. The one piece of good news for them was certainly the return of Bryan Mbeumo (3), though. It still feels unlikely that they’re truly in the relegation scrap but there’s nothing like getting one of your star-men back when you’re looking to get some assurance of your Premier League status. They host Manchester United next. Some of you will recall their last meeting, when United scored twice after 90 minutes to turn around a losing position. They didn’t have Toney that day and this could be the first time all season that they’ve got their preferred front-two available to start a game together. It’s been a long wait.
Luton Town 1 - 1 Nottingham Forest
It’s tough to do this every-week and to not develop soft-spots for certain teams. All season-long we’ve had a bit of a soft spot for Luton. We started the year of the opinion that they’d (sensibly) chosen to invest in the long-term of the club with their spending decisions and that this could be a long-year for them. Turns out, that was under-selling what the manager and this group of players were capable of. They look the most likely of the promoted teams to survive and, by some distance, they’re the most entertaining side down in that relegation scrap. This, however, was not their week. They were objectively quite bad for most of this game and should probably be grateful to leave with a point. Ross Barkley (9) and Chiedozie Ogbene (7) remained reliable on the points front, but this was an off-day for Alfie Doughty (1), who was subbed at half-time. That said, Doughty did have an Assist ruled off after Teden Mengi (6) saw the ball bounce up on to his hand before he finished after a set-piece. The big concerns for Luton are that they’ve simultaneously got an injury crisis testing their depth and are about to go into a horrible run of fixtures (facing Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester City in their next four games). If they’re going to survive, they’ll likely need to pick up points in some tough spots down the stretch. Thankfully, they’ve shown themselves to have the character to do just that. But the odds are not necessarily in their favour.
This was almost a great result for Forest. Had they held on, they’d have put themselves exactly six points ahead of Luton in 18th. Six points, you might recall, is the exact punishment Everton have faced for their PSR breach. But sadly for Forest, they couldn’t hold on, and after a 4-point penalty now sit a point from safety. Chris Wood (13.5) started again, which was a positive for those in need of streaming options, but there was no Taiwo Awoniyi anywhere to be seen on the team-sheets. We also didn’t see Nicolas Dominguez (3.5), who was one of our preferred streaming options this week. Nuno doesn’t like to make things easy for us. The story of the stats in this one is that Forest had a fair number of chances (16 Shots), didn’t get all that many of them on target (6), but the ones that were on target were actually pretty good (Opta credits them with 5 ‘Big Chances’). We’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the Divock Origi (9) experience at Forest so far, but today was one of his better days statistically. We’d like to see them move back to the ‘main two’ wing options for the next game against Crystal Palace, though.
Fulham 3 - 0 Tottenham
One of our favourite things about Fantrax is seeing players Breakout. We try to skew positive here most of the time (it doesn’t always work) so writing about players on the decline or players that have reached their ceiling is fine but we’d rather be writing about players who are on the up. Rodrigo Muniz (23) has a case for being the breakout star of the second-half of this season. We dismissed his (mostly substitute) performances in the first half of the season in relief of Raul Jimenez for one simple reason: he wasn’t really doing anything. But from February onwards, something really clicked for him. Those who have Transaction Corner access know that we were in his corner pretty early and that’s because if you want to turn our heads as a young forward you just have to start taking shots. And that’s exactly what he did. He hasn’t stopped, either. Across his last 5 games, he has 25 Shots (4 Goals). That’s elite volume in the Premier League for a forward. And his xG per Shot is healthy enough too, with 0.12 per shot over the course of this season (a good benchmark is to consider anything between 0.1 and 0.2 as a healthy expected range for an attacking player). Truthfully, making this about one player when we saw great performances from the majority of the Fulham team is probably not fair. But, as we always say with the young guys, the reason they’re exciting is that we don’t know where the ceiling is yet. Since becoming a full-time starter on February 3rd, he’s 3rd Overall in Fantrax points. And Muniz faces Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest in his next 2 Games. So, with apologies to the very good performances of the likes of Antonee Robinson (23.5), Alex Iwobi (11.5) and the rest, we’re looking at a potential Fantrax star here. How he does down the stretch will tell us just how high we should be on him going into draft season.
For Spurs, who were probably hoping to capitalise on their win against Aston Villa last week, this result probably feels disastrous. And there were troubling things about it (certainly conceding 2.76 xG isn’t good and the defence without Micky Van de Ven has a fair few question marks about it). But it’s not like they didn’t have chances to try to claw back into the game. Both Brennan Johnson (5.5) and Timo Werner (6) left some pretty big chances on the pitch that could’ve been the start of the comeback, but sometimes it’s just not your day. They remain in the driving seat for 5th (and, despite the European draws taking away some of the margin for error around the co-efficient, 5th should still be plenty for Champions League qualification). They also are just their game-in-hand behind Villa in 4th. The break may do them some good, as they’re best off just trying to forget this one and moving on to the next game against Luton.
West Ham 1 - 1 Aston Villa
West Ham will come away from this one feeling pretty annoyed they didn’t get the three points. Three times they had the ball in the Villa net, only for VAR to reverse two of the finishes. For our money, they were by far the better team here, even if they allowed Villa to have most of the ball. Villa have somewhat sleep-walked through the last few fixtures, understandably perhaps given their European exertions, but that excuse runs a little thin here, given West Ham faced Freiburg in midweek. In a thin Gameweek, you had no choice but to start the players you rostered, but this was a rare week where basically none of the starting Villa names hit. Leon Bailey (11) was the sole exception to that. Ollie Watkins (4) was a doubt coming into the game and his 2 Shots for 0.06 xG in 90 minutes might be best attributed to a player that needed to be rested here. It was an even worse day for Jhon Duran (-0.5) who didn’t really get into the game at all and was substituted at half-time. I’m sure if you asked Villa fans at the start of the year, they’d be delighted to be sat in 4th Place at the end of March and to be in the Conference League Quarter Finals, so I’m sure they’ll pick themselves up quickly from this result. But Unai Emery may need to think of a suitable way to keep his team fresh down the stretch so that all their good work so far doesn’t fizzle away.
West Ham will likely never win mass-adoration for their play-style but teams do not cope well with them when they’re playing like this. They had just 30% of the ball but, crucially, 2.02 xG to show for it. Michail Antonio (19) was the man of the moment when it comes to the score-sheet (and had one of the two disallowed goals for a handball), but there were good performances in a lot of positions for them. They too will need to focus on how to keep their star-players on the field as they progress in the Europa League, but their play-style may infer them some advantage on that front. They sit in 7th and, despite being close on points to a number of the teams below them, have a good chance to be in European competition against next season. And that’s with the Paqueta-less stretch of poor form at the start of the year. They face Newcastle after the International Break in a game that would go a long way to solidifying their position in those European spots if they could win it.
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 regularly using a resource like PremierInjuries to keep on track of potential stash-ahead guys as we get closer to their expected availability dates.
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