With the news that Florian Lejeune (£4.5m) is set for an extended period on the sidelines, the arrival of Fabian Schar (£5.0m) on Tyneside is a timely one.
The Swiss centre-back would, barring further recruitment, seem likely to line up alongside Jamaal Lascelles (£5.0m) at the heart of the Newcastle defence this season after Lejeune suffered a cruciate knee ligament in training last week.
Schar has joined the Magpies from Deportivo de La Coruna on a three-year deal after United activated a £3m release clause in the defender’s contract.
The Swiss international, who featured for his country at the 2018 World Cup, will cost Fantasy Premier League managers the same amount of money as Lascelles and goalkeeper Martin Dubravka (£5.0m).
While some FPL bosses will baulk at the starting price, Schar’s record of 21 goals in 180 league appearances (a rate better than a goal every nine matches) would suggest that the 26-year-old centre-half is likely to couple clean sheet points with the occasional attacking return in 2018/19.
We need only look to Lascelles’ returns in 2017/18 for how lucrative a combination that can be: the Newcastle captain’s three goals and nine shut-outs helped him to a total of 116 FPL points, the highest score among defenders in the sub-£5.0m bracket last season.
Schar spoke of his goal threat upon signing for the Magpies last week:
I’m not like a typical defender. I, of course, defend, but I’m quite good with the ball. I like to play, I want to build up the game from behind, and I think that is a strength of mine. I have also scored some headers – that could also be a strength and, hopefully, I can use it here.
The History
Born in December 1991, Schar progressed through the youth ranks of FC Wil 1900 and made his debut for his hometown club in November 2009.
Establishing himself as a first-team regular in the 2010/11 season, Schar was to make 52 league appearances for the second-tier Swiss side before a move to Basel in July 2012.
Having already found the back of the net on nine occasions for Wil, Schar was to score a further nine goals in his three years with Basel.
Winning the Swiss Super League in each of his three seasons with the club, Schar made 73 league appearances for Basel and was part of their side that reached the UEFA Europa League semi-finals in his debut campaign. Basel progressed to the quarter-finals of the same competition the following season and qualified for the last-16 of the Champions League in Schar’s final year in his homeland.
Two years with Hoffenheim followed, although his sophomore season with the Bundesliga club was a frustrating one: Schar made only seven league appearances in 2016/17 before departing for Deportivo in July of last year.
Schar made 25 league starts and scored two goals for the La Liga strugglers, who were relegated to the Spanish second tier at the end of April.
Schar’s goalscoring exploits extend to international level, too: the Swiss centre-back has seven goals in 42 appearances for the national side.
The Prospects
Schar looks set to be the only new addition to a settled back five for Newcastle, with Dubravka, Lascelles, Paul Dummett (£4.5m) and DeAndre Yedlin (£4.5m) appearing likely to start the season as first choices in their respective positions. Ciaran Clark (£4.5m) is a possible challenger for Schar’s role but didn’t feature in a single league match from early-February onwards and may well be used only as a back-up again in 2018/19.
United’s defence was the best outside of the top seven in 2017/18, and their total of 47 goals conceded was actually four fewer than Arsenal shipped.
The frustration from an FPL point of view was that the Magpies’ decent overall defensive record didn’t always translate into clean sheets. The Gunners, for example, registered four more clean sheets than Newcastle, while West Ham United – who conceded the joint-most goals in the division last season – recorded one more shut-out than Benitez’s side (nine).
Isolating Newcastle’s statistics in the second half of the season – when Dummett had returned from a long injury lay-off and Dubravka had been recruited in the January transfer window – makes for encouraging reading, though.
Six of Newcastle’s clean sheets came from Gameweek 20 onwards, while only three clubs (Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City) conceded fewer goals than the Magpies (18) in their final 19 league fixtures. The top four clubs were the only sides to allow fewer shots on target than Newcastle (68) during this period, meanwhile.
Whether Schar can further bolster that backline remains to be seen. The Swiss international was part of La Liga’s worst defence last season (Deportivo conceded 76 goals), although five of the Spanish side’s six clean sheets came in one of Schar’s 25 league appearances.
Benitez’s ability to organise a back four and improve his defenders individually cannot be underestimated, though: that he transformed an ordinary-looking backline into one of the tightest in the Premier League last season is a testament to his work on the training pitch.
Schar’s total of 203 Clearances, Blocks and Interceptions (CBI) last season was some 80 short of Lascelles’ total. Even accounting for his reduced pitch-time, Schar’s average of a CBI every 10.9 minutes was worse than that of Lascelles, Clark and Lejeune.
Where Schar could rack up a tidy score on the Bonus Points System is via his tackling. Schar’s net total of 31 successful tackles would have ranked him seventh among Premier League defenders last season and was a far better figure than Newcastle’s next-best stopper (Paul Dummett with 12).
The Swiss international’s passing statistics are another possible path to bonus points, with Schar having averaged 37.8 passes per match last season and completing 80.2% of them. Why this is relevant is that FPL assets who attempt at least 30 passes in a match get two, four or six BPS points if they complete 70, 80 or 90% of their passes respectively.
Schar’s main draw, however, is his attacking threat. No United defender was involved in as many goals as Schar last season (four – two goals, two assists), while his total of 18 attempts on goal was more than any of Newcastle’s backline managed.
Newcastle’s new recruit averaged an attempt on goal every 123.3 minutes for Deportivo last season, a better rate than any of United’s other defenders; Lascelles, by way of example, only registered a shot every 244 minutes.
The Magpies’ run of fixtures from now till early October (Benitez’s side play five of the “big six” in the first eight Gameweeks) are wretched and will likely deter much investment until the second international break at the earliest. After this point, however, Newcastle enjoy a sequence of ten matches in which they do not play any of last season’s top six clubs. Gameweek 9 could, therefore, be the time to take a punt on the Swiss international.
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