We round up the key Fantasy Premier League (FPL) talking points from Saturday’s Gameweek 28 fixtures in our Scout Notes summary.
The graphics below are taken from LiveFPL, Ragabolly’s excellent and ever-expanding website, and our own Premium Members Area.
GOALS, ASSISTS AND BONUS
INJURIES AND BANS
Jarrod Bowen (£7.0m) looks to have avoided any serious injury despite the midfielder limping out of the defeat to Liverpool with what looked like an Achilles injury.
Speaking after the match, David Moyes was concerned about the winger’s inability to put weight on his leg:
“It looks like something in his heel. It happened in the tackle with Andy Robertson. But after, he ran back to the edge of the box and then went down. I was hoping that would mean this isn’t too bad maybe but what I did not like was he came off with non weight-bearing so we will get him scanned and see what it is. For me… look, I am not a physio but it is not an obvious-looking injury to me at the moment, it looks as if he has been caught near the achilles or the heel.” – David Moyes on Jarrod Bowen
However, a subsequent scan has shown that Bowen suffered no significant damage.
“Jarrod underwent an MRI scan in London on Sunday morning and thankfully no significant injury has occurred. He will continue to be monitored by the medical team and will undergo further examination in the coming days.” – Head of Medical, Richard Collinge
Saturday was a reminder that Covid-19 is still very much around and causing problems, as Marcos Alonso (£5.6m), Lucas Digne (£5.1m) and Ezri Konsa (£4.9m) all missed their sides’ respective fixtures.
“Marcos is still ill. He has quite a lot of Covid symptoms so he’s absolutely not able to do training or a game.” – Thomas Tuchel
Declan Rice‘s (£5.1m) absence from the evening kick-off was also illness-related but David Moyes confirmed that this wasn’t anything to do with coronavirus.
Elsewhere, Ki-Jana Hoever‘s (£3.9m) brief stint in the Wolves first team looks to be over before it’s barely started: he was substituted in the first half of the loss to Crystal Palace and was castigated by his boss at full-time:
“I have too many kids in my team that don’t work the way they should. And then when they come into the team, this kind of things happen. Injuries can happen, but this one happened because he’s not prepared. I don’t waste time with guys who don’t work hard.” – Bruno Lage
James McArthur (£4.3m) was absent from that match for the Eagles with an unspecified injury.
FPL TALKING POINTS
WHO IMPRESSED FOR JESSE MARSCH’S LEEDS?
We had a first look at Leeds United under Jesse Marsch in the Saturday lunchtime kick-off. Despite the defeat, there were some encouraging signs.
The American set his troops up in the 4-2-2-2 that he had become known for at Red Bull Salzburg, with Raphinha (£6.5m) and Jack Harrison (£5.5m) supporting Rodrigo (£6.2m) and Daniel James (£6.0m) in attack.
The quartet harried aggressively as a collective and broke at speed together, in keeping with their manager’s en-masse pressing tactics at previous clubs.
James was just about the stand-out Leeds attacker early on, seeing one shot tipped wide and setting up another chance for Harrison, but Raphinha encouragingly came more and more into the game and saw the biggest chance of the match saved from point-blank range.
The Brazilian was top for shots in the box and penalty area touches in this contest, also creating three chances for others.
Marsch’s troops outshot their hosts by 19-7 – this was Leeds’ best expected goal (xG) difference of the season – and Harvey Barnes‘ (£6.5m) goal came against the run of the play, with the Whites’ much-maligned defence unexpectedly holding their own for much of the game.
Barnes was Leicester’s sole bright spark and he has now banked nine attacking returns in his last 10 appearances, despite two of those run-outs coming off the bench. With James Maddison (£6.8m) missing out on a start for the third Gameweek in a row, this time due to injury, Barnes is fast becoming the stand-out Leicester asset for Blank Gameweek 30 and beyond.
xG CATCHES UP WITH WOLVES
It’s now just one clean sheet in eight matches for Wolverhampton Wanderers. Their much-lauded backline were torn apart by Crystal Palace on Saturday and, as any member of ‘Analytics FC’ will be at pains to tell you, this might just be their expected goals conceded (xGC) tally catching up with them.
Opta xGC data tells us that Bruno Lage’s side were massively overachieving in terms of goals conceded and clean sheets in Gameweeks 1-21, and what’s happened since might be merely a reversion to the norm.
In fact, even now, they’re still worryingly letting in fewer than what is expected, despite the dearth of shut-outs:
Above: Teams sorted by xGC delta in the last seven Gameweeks
Owners of Everton and Leeds attackers in Gameweeks 29 and 30 will be hoping that slump continues.
IN-FORM FRASER
It’s now five returns in as many appearances for Ryan Fraser (£5.3m), with every FPL writer and ‘content creator’ under the sun trying to take credit for the Scot’s double-digit haul against Brighton (cough).
He’s now moved up to seventh among Fantasy midfielders for expected goal involvement (xGI) over the last seven Gameweeks:
Another Double Gameweek beckons for the Magpies but the first fixture of that follows less than 72 hours after their trip to Southampton on Thursday, so there could be a spot of rotation after a period of stability in the team. The last time Eddie Howe encountered a three-game week, for instance, only two outfielders started all three matches.
The fixtures are pretty ropey thereafter, too, so the Newcastle ship might have sailed after Gameweek 29.
As for Brighton, they’re in a real rut and have now lost four games in a row – not great preparation or a convincing audition for their players ahead of their tricky-looking Double Gameweek 29.
REECE RETURNS
There were some hugely contrasting FPL scores this week, with the main difference in a lot of cases being Reece James (£6.2m). The England international, newly available after a couple of months on the sidelines, did indeed have his game-time restricted to 70 minutes on Saturday but by that point he had wreaked havoc, scoring and assisting another in Chelsea’s 4-0 win over Burnley.
James now averages 7.3 points per start this season and has five double-digit hauls in the 15 instances in which he has made Thomas Tuchel’s line-up, figures you’d usually associate with a certain Liverpool-based Egyptian.
His goal and assist came from just two shots and one key pass but he’s always there or thereabouts the opposition box, a midfielder masquerading as an FPL defender.
He’s probably not a ‘buy’ for non-owners just yet, as a start on Thursday against Norwich would really leave his Gameweek 29 game-time in the balance, given that a Champions League clash against Lille follows. Chelsea then blank in Gameweek 30.
Thereafter, it’s difficult to make much of a case against him – particularly with two more Double Gameweeks to come on top of the below run.
Chelsea being tucked in third place, without a realistic chance of winning the league and unlikely to lose a Champions League qualification spot, is something to ponder for later in the season, however, as Tuchel may look to preserve his key assets for other competitions, should the Blues still be in cups at home and abroad.
“We missed him for such a long time that you get used to it. It was nine weeks and in this time we had something like 25 matches so we were constantly trying to find solutions and we did it as a team.
“We managed to win games and even titles in this period but once he’s back and plays three times, today the first time from the beginning you see what you missed. It’s such huge quality and very impressive how decisive he is in training and now even in the games.
“These positions are very important when you play with this structure and it’s the same on the left side so it puts things into perspective when you see what we missed and I’m very happy that he came back like this.” – Thomas Tuchel on Reece James
Kai Havertz (£7.8m) has been Chelsea’s form player while they’ve been away on cup duty at home and abroad and he followed that up with a goal and an assist at Turf Moor, again operating ‘out of position’ up front. The hauls recorded by the German and Christian Pulisic (£7.9m) were, in fact, their first double-digit returns of the season, so it’s worth taking their scores with a pinch of salt as, such is the fast-changing nature of life in Tuchel’s squad, another pair of Chelsea midfielders could easily be en vogue by the time the Blues are under serious consideration again in Gameweek 31.
COUTINHO BACK IN THE GROOVE
After a bit of a lull and a Gameweek 27 display in which he failed to register a single penalty area touch, Philippe Coutinho (£7.4m) burst back into life with a vengeance against Southampton.
This wasn’t a ball-spraying masterclass from deep; encouragingly for owners, the Brazilian bettered even Villa’s strike duo for penalty box touches, feeding off some promising link-up play from the slowly improving Danny Ings (£7.7m) and Ollie Watkins (£7.5m).
Three excellent chances went begging for Coutinho inside the Southampton area before he lashed in his third goal in seven matches, so there could easily have been other attacking returns at Villa Park.
Villa’s next five matches (from Gameweek 29 onwards) are all against top-half opposition, it should be noted, although Saints were themselves sitting in ninth and on a superb run of form before Coutinho and co put them to the sword.
Ralph Hasenhuttl’s troops can chalk this down as an off-day after their exploits of late, with injuries and midweek exertions perhaps catching up with them.
Encouragingly for Che Adams (£7.0m), he still managed two big chances even in resounding defeat, helping boost his xG tally to 3.54 over the last six Gameweeks – the best of any Premier League player when penalties are taken out of the equation:
BEST OF THE REST
Norwich v Brentford would be last on Match of the Day if it was billed in order of FPL importance, although the Bees are worth monitoring for Blank Gameweek 30 when they are one of just eight clubs in action.
Ivan Toney (£6.5m) is certainly coming into a bit of belated form, with his hat-trick at Carrow Road taking him to five goals in three starts – although two of his strikes against Norwich were from the spot and the other was from a set piece, and he posed little threat from open play.
Christian Eriksen (£5.5m) impressed on his first start, even lasting the full 90 minutes. The stats will show no chances created but his set-piece deliveries were on point and he ‘assisted the assister’ for Brentford’s first goal. Given that Leicester have struggled to defend dead-ball situations all season, Eriksen isn’t a bad differential shout for that aforementioned Gameweek 30.
“I would say incredible, I would say the 90 minutes [was] fantastic. As I said earlier and in some of the press conferences, it would take him some time to get up to that top level.
“But you still saw three, four, five top actions, I think the delivery for the first goal, I think there were some balls in behind for his teammates where you could just see ‘wow, that’s another level’.” – Thomas Frank on Christian Eriksen
Bowen’s injury was the main talking point from Liverpool’s win over West Ham, as discussed earlier.
The display of Luis Diaz (£8.0m), despite a blank, was another key talking point. The young winger was excellent again on Saturday and if it wasn’t already before, then now it’s definitely a five-way fight for three spots in attack – further reason, perhaps, to be wary of Diogo Jota‘s (£8.3m) minutes in Double Gameweek 29. Even Mohamed Salah (£13.2m), who had one of his greedy, profligate days, was substituted for just the third time this season, to underscore the risk of minutes being eat into up top.
“The boys have now really proper quality in-depth, but we cannot play all competitions and go far in the competitions if we don’t have this depth, there is no chance. You can do it for a year when you are lucky with injuries, but I think we had years where Bobby, Sadio and Mo played pretty much all the games, if I am right. Sometimes they came from the bench, but the next game they started again. In a week, especially like this – Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday and Tuesday, when we play again against Inter, there is no chance that you try to get through with the same line-up.” – Jurgen Klopp on rotation
