Southampton’s only significant capture of the January transfer window saw Kyle Walker-Peters (£4.4m) move to St Mary’s on loan until the end of 2019/20.
The much-underused Tottenham Hotspur right-back, who has made only 12 Premier League appearances for the Lilywhites over the last three seasons, is effectively a replacement for Cedric Soares (£4.8m), who moved to the red half of north London last month.
Walker-Peters was not considered for the Gameweek 25 clash with Liverpool because of a lack of pre-match preparation but the winter break came at a good time for the Spurs loanee, who finally made his Southampton debut against Burnley on Saturday.
Is the budget Fantasy Premier League asset worthy of consideration, then, with other Southampton defenders available for a similar amount of money?
The Saints certainly have the fixtures, as they sit top of our Season Ticker over the next four Gameweeks and have a decent-looking match against West Ham United in Blank Gameweek 28.
As part of our ongoing transfer window coverage, we take a look at Walker-Peters’ prospects in the Moving Target article below.
You can read our reports on some other new arrivals via the following links:
- What to expect from Liverpool’s Takumi Minamino
- Bruno Fernandes’ mid-price midfield potential
- Can we expect more attacking returns from Steven Bergwijn?
- What impact will Sander Berge have on John Lundstram?
- New West Ham signing Jarrod Bown under the spotlight
- Odion Ighalo one to monitor for now
The History and Statistics
Progressing through Spurs’ academy and into the reserve side, Walker-Peters was first involved with the senior team as an unused substitute in the Premier League match against Bournemouth in March 2016.
Not called upon the following season, the young full-back’s full debut finally came in the opening game of 2017/18, with Mauricio Pochettino’s side running out 2-0 winners at St James’ Park.
His only other start in that campaign came in Gameweek 38, when he set up two of Spurs’ goals in a nine-goal thriller against Leicester, although there were other run-outs in the FA Cup, EFL Cup and (as a substitute) in the UEFA Champions League.
There were a further six Premier League appearances (four from the start) in 2018/19, with Walker-Peters’ season perhaps best remembered for his hat-trick of assists in the 5-0 win over Bournemouth on Boxing Day.
The 22-year-old defender started this season as first choice in his position, making the starting XI in Gameweeks 1 to 3, although the return to fitness of Serge Aurier (£5.0m) shunted him down the pecking order at right-back and Pochettino even turned to Moussa Sissoko (£4.8m) in that position in Gameweek 8 when Aurier was sidelined through suspension.
Walker-Peters wasn’t called upon by Pochettino or Jose Mourinho since, save for one run-out in the dead rubber of a Champions League tie against Bayern Munich in December.
With less than 1,000 minutes of top-flight football to his name in total, there is very little meaningful that we can analyse from an underlying stats perspective.
His minutes-per-chance created averages last season (53) and in 2017/18 (68) were among the best in the division among FPL defenders but we’re talking about such a small pool of data (374 minutes and 188 minutes respectively) that we have to treat those figures with understandable caution.
