The Digest – free-scoring Fraser, wonderful Wolves and Emery’s Arsenal

Our Gameweek 5 coverage ends with this regular look back at a player, team and discussion point that attracted our interest in the weekend’s matches.

Ryan Fraser rewarded his FPL owners who put faith in his fitness with a mammoth haul, while Wolves continue to go from strength to strength after a second successive 1-0 win.

Meanwhile, we ask whether Unai Emery’s Arsenal are a more attractive proposition than the side coached by Arsene Wenger last season.

The Player

A lot of the narrative that followed last weekend’s matches centred around Eden Hazard (£10.8m), who catapulted himself to the top of the FPL points table with a hat-trick against Cardiff City at Stamford Bridge.

Having already scrutinised the Belgian’s displays in our Gameweek 3 Digest and indeed taken a fresh look at his underlying attacking statistics in an article on Tuesday, we will instead turn our attention to another high-scoring player from Gameweek 5: Ryan Fraser (£5.7m).

The Bournemouth midfielder racked up 18 points with two goals, an assist and maximum bonus in the Cherries’ 4-2 win over Leicester City, and now sits only below Hazard and Sadio Mane (£10.0m) for total FPL points among players in his position.

Fraser’s returns bucked the key performance indicators (KPIs) somewhat: the winger’s three goal involvements at the Vitality Stadium came from just two shots and as many key passes.

Over the course of the season, no FPL midfielder available for under £6.0m has registered more efforts on goal from inside the opposition area than Fraser, while only Demarai Gray (£5.5m) – who has on occasion been deployed as an “out of position” forward for Leicester – in this price bracket has recorded more penalty box touches.

Fraser’s average position on Saturday’s game was actually further forward than striker Josh King’s (£6.3m), while the Scottish international registered twice as many penalty area touches than Callum Wilson (£6.4m).

It is Fraser’s creativity that particularly stands out, however. Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) and David Silva (£8.5m) are the only midfielders who have created more chances than Fraser this season, while no FPL asset in any position has supplied as many big chances as the pint-sized Bournemouth winger.

Fraser’s KPIs (specifically minutes per chance, key pass, penalty box touch, shot from inside the opposition area and effort on target) have all improved from last season, too.

One caveat to his creativity statistics is that his monopoly at set-plays may be challenged by the acquisition of left-back Diego Rico (£4.5m), who has taken five corners in the two league matches he has featured in.

A looming threat to his starts on the left flank may come from the imminent return of Junior Stanislas (£6.0m), meanwhile, who featured for the under-21s on Tuesday evening for his first taste in action in six months.

Stanislas though, like Fraser, has the capacity to play on either flank, so it seems far likelier that David Brooks’ (£5.0m) starts will be jeopardised on current form – who will be asked to take up the right-wing role is another question.

Given his current purple patch, there seems little danger of Fraser being rotated as much as he was last season when he was an unused substitute on nine occasions and sent on as a second-half replacement in a further three instances. The Scottish winger, in fact, has started 12 league matches in a row going back to the tail-end of 2017/18.

That Eddie Howe was willing to take a risk on Fraser’s fitness (the Scottish international had picked up a hamstring strain over the international break) says much about the manager’s faith in the diminutive playmaker at this present time.

We can’t realistically expect 18-point hauls from Fraser too often or indeed perhaps again this campaign: the budget midfielder has had four shots on target all season, three of which ended up in the back of the net.

In his price bracket, though, there are few better options, particularly with the Cherries sitting top of our Season Ticker for the next five Gameweeks. The south coast club’s next opponents, Burnley, have conceded more chances from the flanks than any other side this season.

No FPL midfielder is proving better value, either, with Fraser returning 6.8 points per million spent – a full two points per million ahead of the chasing pack.

The Team

While a strong asterisk has to be placed next to their back-to-back wins over wretched opposition in West Ham United and Burnley, Wolverhampton Wanderers are quietly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the top flight.

Their players, meanwhile, have steadily presented themselves as excellent budget Fantasy options, with all bar Diogo Jota (£6.2m) available for £5.5m or less in FPL.

Nuno Espirito Santo’s side had more attempts on goal (30) and shots in the box (20) than any other Premier League club in Gameweek 5, while only Manchester City registered more penalty box touches and big chances than Wolves across the weekend’s matches.

At the other end, the West Midlands club didn’t allow Burnley a single big chance at Molineux, while no team conceded fewer shots in the box or efforts on target than Santo’s troops in the Gameweek just gone.

This defensive solidity wasn’t a one-off: only four clubs have allowed fewer shots on target than Wolves this season, while just two sides have conceded more efforts from inside the area.

Only Liverpool have conceded fewer big chances, meanwhile.

The Reds are also the only Premier League club to have conceded fewer chances from the flanks than Wolves, a testament to Jonny and Matt Doherty‘s (both £4.4m) work ethic as wing-backs and the three centre-halves covering behind them.

Offensively, only three sides have registered more attempts on goal this season while just four clubs have generated more big chances – though these figures are somewhat skewed by the one-sided victory over Burnley last weekend.

Raul Jimenez (£5.5m) has been the beneficiary of Wolves’ creativity and sits fourth for attempts on goal and big chances among FPL forwards. As we discussed in our Scout Notes write-up of Southampton v Brighton, he and Danny Ings (£5.7m) are really the only sub-£6.0m forwards who can offer regular starts and a tangible goal threat in FPL this season.

Thirteen Premier League clubs have scored more goals than Wolves (five) this season, however, and their most attractive Fantasy options are arguably away from the attack at this present time: Wolves’ shot accuracy and goal conversion rates are among the worst in the division.

We have highlighted the impressive team defensive KPIs above, but there are several individuals within the Wolves backline who are particularly standing out.

Jonny has registered more key passes than all but two FPL defenders this season, while no-one in Doherty’s position – not even Marcos Alonso (£6.8m) – has recorded more shots in the box than the Irish wing-back in 2018/19.

Jonny and Doherty also feature in the top ten defenders with the most penalty box touches in this campaign so far.

Willy Boly (£4.5m), meanwhile, is ranked sixth among defenders for baseline bonus points.

Once Saturday’s trip to Old Trafford is out of the way, Santo’s side then face four fixtures (SOU, cry, WAT, bha) that offer the prospects of returns at either end of the pitch: indeed Wolves sit top of our Season Ticker for attack and defence from Gameweeks 7-10.

The Talking Point

Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.1m) is the second-most-sold FPL midfielder of this current round, with over 165,000 managers understandably losing faith in the Armenian winger after his second successive benching in the league.

The frustration over Mkhitaryan, still the most-owned Arsenal asset in the game, is compounded by the fact that the Gunners are in the middle of an excellent run of fixtures, with only Liverpool of the “big six” to come between now and the beginning of December.

While their defence is a no-go right now (the Gunners being one of only five teams without a clean sheet in the Premier League and having allowed almost twice as many shots on goal as Manchester City), their attack has plundered ten goals in four matches – the third-most in the division.

Of their midfielders and attackers, however, only Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£10.9m) has started all five league matches this season – and his limitations have been well-documented in recent weeks, notably in our KPI analysis of premium forwards.

Is this Unai Emery-led incarnation of Arsenal worth taking a rotation risk on, then, given their goalscoring form?

A quick KPI comparison of Emery’s troops with Arsene Wenger’s team from 2017/18 suggests this current side have actually regressed.

The 2018/19 version of the Gunners are averaging fewer chances, big chances, goal attempts and shots in the box per match than Wenger’s much-maligned outfit of last season, with only their rate of shots on target showing an upward trajectory.

Of course, Arsenal began the season with a tricky double-header against Manchester City and Chelsea, so is there any improvement in the Gunners’ KPIs from Gameweek 3-5 compared to 2017/18?

In a word, no. Again, only their average number of shots on target per match is better than last season’s, with the north London side once more down on chances, big chances, goal attempts and shots in the box.

Their goal conversion has at least improved, up to 14.3% from 12.5% last season.

Those who put their faith in expected goals (xG) will note that Arsenal are thus overachieving this season to the tune of +2.68 goals, which ranks them fourth for xG delta.

Arsenal’s KPIs are something we may explore in more depth over the next international break but at the moment, given the unsettled nature of their starting XI and their slightly underwhelming underlying attacking numbers compared to last season, Unai Emery’s Gunners are difficult to trust from a Fantasy perspective.

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