Virgil van Dijk’s first full season in a Liverpool shirt has much potential from a Fantasy perspective.
The club-record £75m signing from Southampton made an instant impact on Merseyside, helping the Liverpool defence to seven clean sheets in his 14 league appearances for the Reds.
Priced at £6.0m in Fantasy Premier League this season, van Dijk and left-back Andrew Robertson are the joint-most expensive defensive assets in Jurgen Klopp’s squad.
Liverpool welcome West Ham United, Brighton and Hove Albion, and Southampton to Anfield in the first six Gameweeks and their defenders are proving to be popular FPL purchases: all five members of the perceived first-choice backline, including Trent Alexander-Arnold (£5.0m), Dejan Lovren (£5.0m) and goalkeeper Alisson (£5.5m), have double-digit ownership.
The past two seasons have been something of a frustration, both for van Dijk personally and for his mostly untapped Fantasy potential.
Van Dijk’s debut Premier League campaign in 2015/16 still represents his personal FPL benchmark, with the-then Southampton centre-half registering three goals, ten clean sheets, 16 bonus points and 130 FPL points overall as the Saints finished sixth under Ronald Koeman.
A serious ankle injury suffered in January 2017 cut short his sophomore season with the Saints before a transfer window tussle for his services between Southampton and Liverpool hampered his pre-season preparations for the campaign just gone. Having handed in a transfer request in August of last year, van Dijk was to start just 11 league matches for the Saints before further speculation led to his omission from Mauricio Pellegrino’s team in mid-December.
The move to Anfield has firmly placed van Dijk back onto the FPL radar, though, and the Dutch international’s form in the final four months of 2017/18 hints at greater things to come: no Premier League defender kept more clean sheets than van Dijk (seven) after his Liverpool debut in Gameweek 24.
Van Dijk’s Initial Impact at Liverpool
Despite an inglorious first league appearance in a Liverpool shirt (a 1-0 away defeat to Swansea City), van Dijk’s positive effect on the Reds’ backline was palpable.
Before the Dutchman’s arrival, Liverpool had conceded goals at a rate of 1.21 per match (the sixth-best average in the league) and allowed a mean of 1.56 big chances per fixture (seventh-best). Six other Premier League sides had registered more clean sheets than Liverpool (nine) prior to van Dijk’s capture, meanwhile.
From Gameweeks 24 to 38, the Reds conceded an average of 0.66 goals per fixture (the joint-best mean in the top flight) and only allowed their opposition an average of 1.2 big chances (joint-second best) per match. The Reds’ total of eight clean sheets – only one of which van Dijk wasn’t present for – over this period was also a division-high.
Liverpool’s defence in general improved in 2017/18 and their record at Anfield was notably impressive, with only ten goals conceded and 12 clean sheets registered (out of a total of 17) across the whole of the season.
Goal Threat
Van Dijk is surely due a goal or two this season. In 2017/18, the only defender to have more attempts on goal than the Dutch centre-back (27) without scoring was Brighton’s Shane Duffy. Twenty of van Dijk’s efforts were from set plays, highlighting his particular strength at dead-ball situations.
Van Dijk’s minutes-per-chance mean of 83.4 was also the best in the Premier League among centre-backs with more than 20 league appearances to their name.
From van Dijk’s Liverpool debut onwards, the only centre-half to have more efforts on goal (16) than the former Celtic defender was Leicester City’s Harry Maguire.
The Netherlands international was on target in the 3-1 defeat against Borussia Dortmund this week and intriguingly took a direct free-kick in the 2-1 win over Manchester City.
Alisson’s Arrival
The acquisition of Brazil number one Alisson from Roma surely adds to van Dijk’s clean sheet potential. The world’s most expensive goalkeeper had a better save percentage (79.3%) last season than all other Premier League goalkeepers bar David de Gea; Loris Karius and Simon Mignolet’s save percentages, by contrast, were down at 68.9% and 61.0% respectively.
De Gea and Nick Pope were the only Premier League goalkeepers with a better “expected goals (xG) prevented” total than Alisson, who saved a net total of eight shots that he was expected to concede.
De Gea was also the only goalkeeper in the English top flight who bettered Alisson’s clean sheet total of 18 for Roma.
A Lack of Rotation Threat
For Liverpool to make a serious tilt at the Premier League title this season, then the only top-class centre-back on their books is surely a must-start in the vast majority of their domestic matches.
From Gameweek 26 until the end of the 2017/18 season, van Dijk started every single one of Liverpool’s Premier League fixtures. This unbroken sequence of appearances came in spite of the Reds’ progress to the final of the UEFA Champions League and Klopp’s predilection for rotating other key members of his side, including Robertson and Alexander-Arnold (both of whom failed to start three of those 13 matches).
That van Dijk – unlike Alexander-Arnold and Lovren – has had the summer off from international duty also bodes well for his chances of a sustained run in the first team right from Gameweek 1.
Read more with Scout
Visit our PRE-SEASON PAGE to get the latest pointers from pre-season friendlies and read scout reports on new players by CLICKING HERE.
Pick your FPL team for 2018/19 using our list of best available players, sorted for your convenience by position and price:
Goalkeepers | Defenders: Budget | Defenders: Mid-Price and Premium | Midfielders: Budget | Midfielders: Mid-Price | Midfielders: Premium
Also check out our detailed statistical analysis articles on every team comparing data for the last two seasons to highlight the players to sign and the players to avoid:
Arsenal | Bournemouth | Brighton & Hove Albion | Burnley | Cardiff City | Chelsea | Crystal Palace | Everton | Fulham | Huddersfield Town | Leicester City | Liverpool | Manchester City | Manchester United | Newcastle United | Southampton | Tottenham Hotspur
Become a Member and access our data
Memberships for the 2018/19 campaign are now available for the pre-season price of just £12.50. This will increase to the regular price of £15 after the first Gameweek of the season.
Join now to get the following:
- Plot your transfer strategies using the fully interactive Season Ticker.
- Get projections for every Premier League player provided by the Rate My Team statistical model.
- Use Rate My Team throughout the season to guide your selections and transfers.
- Get access to over 130+ exclusive members articles over the season.
- Analyse our OPTA-powered statistic tables specifically tailored for Fantasy Football Managers.
- Use our exclusive tool to build custom stats tables from over 100 OPTA player and team stats.
- View heatmaps and expected goals data for every player.
- Use our powerful comparison tool to analyse players head-to-head.
CLICK HERE TO BECOME A FANTASY FOOTBALL SCOUT MEMBER
