Contrasting fortunes and styles for the Premier League’s big teams, but the Manchester City juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down.
Elsewhere, there’s a sighting of the lesser spotted “viable budget striker”. Here’s my Gameweek 8 takeaway.
We should cherish a predictable Lukaku
Poor old Romelu Lukaku. Once much maligned for blanking in the “easy” games before punishing his doubters with high scores against the bigger teams, now we berate him for following the form book more deferentially by failing to score away to a Liverpool side which has, after all, only conceded one league goal at home all season.
And this accommodating pattern was amply foreshadowed last season when seventeen of his twenty-five strikes for Everton came against opponents in the bottom half of the table, in addition to four goals against ninth placed Bournemouth.
Manchester United mustered just two shots in the box during the bore draw at Anfield (compared to a previous average of eleven) with only a single attempt – through Lukaku – on target (compared to a previous average of nearly seven).
Even his biggest critics, though, would acknowledge that Lukaku was not entirely to blame for firing blanks last Saturday, as another footballing certainty was played out: Jose Mourinho is a spoiler away to the top sides.
Mourinho was never going to surprise us
For those holding on to Lukaku, it’s worth noting that United face all four of their remaining (traditional) top six rivals in the next eight Gameweeks, with more promising fixtures away to Huddersfield and Watford and home to Newcastle and Brighton to appeal to the those who like to view the glass as half full.
Defensively, though, shouldn’t we now be viewing every fixture as a good one for the Red Devils? With an astonishing seven clean sheets in eight league games and having already shown the nous to frustrate Liverpool’s (intermittently) electrifying strike force, we should surely have no fears in starting United’s defensive assets in every match, with the exception of Manchester City’s visit in Gameweek 16.
Almost a third of Phil Jones’ owners learnt that lesson the hard way after benching him this weekend, following hard on the heels of Bailly-gate last weekend, when Jones defied pre-match speculation as to his availability to record a six-pointer in the absence of his more popular Ivorian centre-half partner.
We can’t say we haven’t been warned about Mourinho’s game plan against the bigger sides. United have only scored a solitary goal in their last six matches against their top six rivals and trips to Stamford Bridge and the Emirates, together with the need to contain the potency of Spurs and, in particular, Manchester City, could well lead more of the ‘pragmatic’ approach viewers endured at the weekend.
Great news for anyone owning their defenders; less so for their strikers.
Kane the new Troll-kaku
Just over 42% of the game owns Harry Kane but we still don’t know which way to turn. A breathtaking September silenced (for a time) any suggestions that the Spurs striker and double Golden Boot winner was anything other than the definition of essential.
But one doubt remained, lurking deep below, like the clown prince Pennywise waiting for its victims.
Kane has already shown he can get in among the goals at Wembley for Spurs in Europe and for his country. Yet in the league, his barren home run now extends to four matches against the sort of circus defences (Chelsea aside) which usually invite their opponents to roll up, roll up and have as many shots as they fancy.
Many of Kane’s underlying statistics (goal attempts, shots on target, minutes per attempt) are actually better at Wembley than away from home, but there’s no hiding from the fact that his key statistics (expected goal involvement, big chances and, crucially, goals) favour away days.
With trips to Arsenal (a traditionally goal-happy fixture) and a locked-down United after this Sunday’s match against Liverpool, many had homed in on the visit of Crystal Palace in Gameweek Eleven as the oasis of goals in a desert of shut-outs. But with so many other scoring options (mainly at Manchester City), September’s must-have could be flushed down the sewer again very quickly in October.
“Essential” Davies is on the blink
If Kane has shown a capacity to frustrate, spare a thought for those of us who own Ben Davies. The full-back had seemingly made himself indispensable with three hauls of fourteen points or more and statistics to rival Marcos Alonso’s last season. Sadly, those were interspersed with blanks and, even more unforgivingly, two absences from games in which his team-mates kept clean sheets.
On both occasions, boss Maurico Pochettino has cited minor knocks or illness, but these excuses have done little to placate the FPL masses, who feel that 5.9 is way too much cash to tie up in a player who, infuriatingly, seems destined to miss precisely the ‘easy’ games which we expect him to excel in.
As mentioned, only the Gameweek 11 showdown with Crystal Palace seems to fall into that category and, with Danny Rose edging his way back into contention, the doom-mongers are already predicting that Davies could miss yet another lucrative home fixture.
The perfect storm for the perfect team
Sometimes, the underlying statistics merely confirm what the eye can plainly see. Manchester City’s twenty nine goals is over double that of every other team bar Spurs and United and City are comfortably the first team to hit three figures in goal attempts, with their 102 efforts coming in just eight matches.
What makes the sky most beautifully blue currently – aside from watching Kevin De Bruyne tear defences apart with an elegance to warrant bonus points for “just being a class act” – is how consistently and evenly the players are sharing what is potentially the biggest points pie in FPL history.
On Saturday, Stoke’s two deflected strikes doubled the number of goals City had conceded all season and kept the Citizens’ defenders out of the points for once, leaving Mark, among others, cursing filling a valuable spot with Nicolas Otamendi and contemplating joining the 170,000 who have already transferred out the Argentine.
Further upfield, though, it was carnage as usual, even without miracle man Sergio Aguero. Four of the top six FPL midfielders and two of the top four FPL strikers ply their trade at the Etihad. That’s an unprecedented dominance which even the old axis of Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge couldn’t dream of matching in their pomp.
And all this achieved from six players who have, on average, played less than three-quarters (73.75%) of the available game time.
Records are there to be broken
It is no longer a question of whether we should perhaps have a Manchester City attacker or even two, but of whether we can squeeze three into our squads whilst this purple patch continues. We were right to fear rotation and to wag our fingers and warn that points would be shared. What we did not – could not possibly –anticipate was that there would be so many points on offer.
City have one of the most favourable fixture lists over the next seven matches, before an intriguing visit to Old Trafford, and they begin this run with a visit from a Burnley side which has allowed their opponents more shots than any other team in the league.
City’s last three home games have seen their visitors’ nets bulge five times (twice) and seven times and the statisticians have already checked the record books to check the highest margin of victory in the the Premier League (United’s 9-0 demolition of Ipswich in 1995).
Could this be the season, or even the week, that we see that record fall?
Cue 0-0 and a colossal display from Nick Pope…
A scoring Swan at last
With a scoring record which only bettered that of Crystal Palace, Swansea City were hardly on our attacking radars before the weekend. Some had wrestled with the dilemma of whether to go for Tammy Abraham as their third striker or for a wasteful Joselu, who was at least playing for a more creative side, but Paul Clement’s men were largely overlooked.
A brace for Abraham seems to have settled the budget striker debate and has brought the Swansea man into our thoughts as a third forward of genuine potential. His four goals is, after all, level with Alexandre Lacazette and only two behind, Kane, the City pair and Alvaro Morata.
His suitors, though, could do worse than find a rotation buddy for the Swansea forward. His next three away fixtures (Arsenal, Burnley and Chelsea) look far more challenging that his next three home games (Leicester, Brighton and Bournemouth) and a quick comparison of his underlying statistics confirm that – unlike Kane – Abraham prefers home comforts. Four shots on target to one, five big chances to none and, most importantly, three goals to one tells its own story of the cheap striker of choice.
