With the Gameweek 33 deadline of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) just two days away, our Scout Notes are a whistle-stop affair.
All five of Saturday’s Premier League matches are covered in this article, with the usual array of graphics and Opta numbers taken from our Premium Members Area.
TONEY AVOIDS 10TH BOOKING
While a Football Association charge still hangs over his head, Ivan Toney (£7.7m) is at least free from the threat of suspension from yellow card accumulation.
Brentford have now played their 32nd league fixture of the season, so if and when Toney collects his 10th booking of the campaign, he’ll no longer pick up a two-match ban as a consequence.
Above: Only four Premier League players can still get a two-match ban
Toney bagged his 19th goal of the season in the 1-1 draw with Aston Villa; only once since the Boxing Day restart has he gone more than one match without scoring.
Tough fixtures await Brentford in the run-in but Toney and the Bees tend to be big-game characters: this was the striker’s 12th goal against top-half opposition this season, two more than any other Premier League player has managed.
Ollie Watkins’ (£7.7m) fine run of form came to an end, as it had to at some point, and in truth, it was a quiet afternoon for the striker, who didn’t register his first shot on goal until the 86th minute.
This was a bit of an off-day for the Villans after their exceptional results and performances of recent months but Emi Buendia (£5.7m) – again playing up top alongside Watkins – was a shining light, carving out a number of openings before Douglas Luiz (£4.8m) rifled home a late equaliser from Buendia’s tee-up.
Alex Moreno (£4.5m) almost banked a clean sheet – his number was about to be put up just before Toney’s 65th-minute opener, and the substitution went through as planned in the aftermath of the goal.
IN SICKNESS…
Emi Martinez (£5.0m) was keeping Brentford at bay in the aforementioned match in west London but failed to emerge for the second half, being replaced by Robin Olsen (£3.9m) between the sticks.
Over at the King Power Stadium, James Maddison (£8.1m) wasn’t even in the hosts’ matchday squad.
Both players were suffering from sickness bugs but are hoping to be back for their respective Gameweek 33 fixtures on Tuesday night.
“The doctor told me this morning. Hopefully, he will be fit to train on Monday. He was one of the first to get me just then.” – Dean Smith on James Maddison
“He has a stomach virus. He was feeling bad before the match. We tried to support him. After the first half, he was feeling worse and could not continue. It is something with his stomach. He was not feeling good.
“We have another game on Tuesday (against Fulham) so we will wait and hopefully it’s not something that will rule him out.” – Unai Emery on Emi Martinez
THREE STRIKERS, DEAN? THAT’S INSANE
In the absence of Maddison and Harvey Barnes (£6.7m), who is also expected to be nearing fitness come Gameweek 33, Dean Smith went gung-ho by naming Patson Daka (£5.6m), Kelechi Iheanacho (£5.9m) and Jamie Vardy (£9.1m) in the same line-up. Iheanacho started behind Vardy up top, while Daka struggled with a left-wing role and looked very much like the placeholder for Barnes.
Iheanacho got lucky with his goal, as Vardy was injured when winning Leicester’s 37th-minute penalty. The Nigerian duly stepped up to convert the spot-kick as his veteran positional rival received treatment.
A three-striker set-up sounds very exciting from an FPL perspective, and it helped the Foxes to one of their highest single-game xG totals of the season (2.42).
But it has to be stressed that Barnes and Maddison have to be crowbarred back into the side, in positions that Daka and Iheanacho initially occupied on Saturday, so we could be back down to one orthodox forward against Leeds United.
Vardy is a slight doubt for that match, having failed to shake off the knock he sustained when winning the Foxes’ penalty.
“He’d had that knock and rolled his ankle. I felt we needed an extra body in there, we had three centre-forwards on the pitch. So, I felt he had done his job and we could give him that rest.” – Dean Smith on Jamie Vardy
The wing-back system was abandoned by Smith for this game but his two full-backs still combined for the winner, while Caglar Soyuncu (£4.2m) was impressive at centre-half; there’s hope yet that Leicester may soon end their clean-sheet drought. But for Youri Tielemans (£6.1m) gift-wrapping Wolves an opener here, it might have already been over.
Speaking of Julen Lopetegui’s side, their away-day woes drag on. Their only two wins on the road have come at the clubs now sitting 18th and 20th in the Premier League table, while no side has kept fewer away clean sheets (one). They’ve still got to face Brighton, Manchester United and Arsenal on their travels, something that will interest owners of attacking assets from these three teams.
KLOPP ON ROBERTSON + JOTA
Reports of Andrew Robertson‘s (£6.8m) death as a Fantasy asset may have been slightly exaggerated after he not only claimed an assist in the 3-2 win over Nottingham Forest but also registered the most chances created of any Premier League player on Saturday.
No-one on show at Anfield could beat him for final-third touches, either.
Above: Liverpool players’ average positions in Gameweek 32, including Trent Alexander-Arnold (66) and Andrew Robertson (26)
All of this talk has come about because Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.4m) is now operating like one of Pep Guardiola’s full-backs (ie inverting into the centre of midfield) and seemingly restricting Robertson’s ability to bomb forward like he used to.
Most of the opportunities Robertson supplied against Forest came from set plays, it has to be said, with 13 of Liverpool’s 18 shots overall – and all three of their goals – arriving from dead-ball situations.
Klopp acknowledged that the times they were a-changing, tactically, with Robertson having to “judge the situations when he can be involved”.
“That’s a bit football-specific but, of course, it changed the role slightly, that’s clear. We cannot have one full-back in the centre of the field and the other one constantly high up on the left side. That’s difficult. So Robbo has to judge the situations when he can be involved, like, I don’t know which goal number at Leeds, but when Diogo passes the ball and then he overlaps and passes the ball to Cody, Mo, goal. These situations are still there. But in the first moment of the build-up, yes, his positioning has changed slightly. But he’s obviously a very experienced player, a very smart player and he knows when we need him there. Today it was a bit of a mix because we needed as well width and depth. That means from time to time he had to be high – but that just depends on the moment and the situation.
“The boys have to learn to read these situations right and do these things in the right moment. Today, obviously Nottingham tried to man-mark both sixes and 10s with Hendo and Curtis, that makes life slightly tricky and gave Ibou a lot of moments on the ball and in the beginning he didn’t use it that well. Oh, now I remember Diogo’s chance – the long ball from Ibou and a really good header and a really good save. So, Ibou had a lot of time and space. And that’s the next thing, if an opponent is doing that, how can we help Ibou to use those moments slightly better? It’s, if you want, early days with that kind of system, so we have to work on that.” – Jurgen Klopp on Andrew Robertson’s role
The fortunes of Cody Gakpo (£7.7m) and Diogo Jota (£8.8m) couldn’t have been much different in this match, the former being withdrawn after 59 minutes for a one-pointer and the latter popping up with two set-piece goals to finish on his second double-digit haul of the week.
Mohamed Salah (£12.9m) bisected their scores with a goal of his own, his 12th attacking return in his last 10 starts – as many as he had recorded in the 20 games before that.
“I think the second goal you really can see what goals do to offensive players. They give confidence. It was a super first touch, it didn’t look like a massive chance in the first moment when you see three in the box, bam, first touch, great, and then the second one is just exceptional. He could have scored a third one in the first half already – I’m not sure, did he have a chance in the second half for the third? Again, that shows you can, as an offensive player, be involved in absolutely each defensive situation and be still a threat offensively. There’s no if [or] or – you can do both and Diogo is doing that. That makes him, for us, so valuable and that’s why he deserves that obviously.” – Jurgen Klopp on Diogo Jota
Jota is the only attacker in Liverpool’s side to start all five league matches since the March international break; a sign of the esteem that Klopp holds for the former Wolves man but also perhaps a concern for the back-to-back matches in Gameweeks 33-35, with Darwin Nunez (£8.7m) and Luis Diaz (£7.8m) waiting in the wings.
In truth, there probably aren’t many Reds who will escape at least one benching in the next fortnight.
EVERTON’S RIGHT-BACK PROBLEM
A match that finished 0.51-0.39 in terms of expected goals (xG) was as uneventful as it suggested.
Crystal Palace kept their second successive clean sheet and Sam Johnstone (£4.4m) hauled again, that potent mix of relatively easy saves to make (nine in total across the last two Gameweeks) and a shortage of big chances faced (just one) helping boost his bonus points scores without jeopardising his clean sheet.
Vicente Guaita (£4.4m) was in the matchday squad on Saturday but didn’t dislodge Johnstone; perhaps he may not have been considered fit enough to start but it’d be a surprise to see the Spaniard make an immediate return given how well his positional rival has played.
The ball-spraying Joachim Andersen (£4.4m) supplied another two opportunities from centre-half, meanwhile, taking him to five chances created in four Gameweeks under Roy Hodgson.
Everton kept their first away clean sheet since before the World Cup and Sean Dyche’s aim was clear here, switching to a more defensive 4-5-1 set-up after the recent flirtation with a 4-4-2.
Their right-back area remains a problem in the absence of Seamus Coleman (£4.2m), however, with Mason Holgate (£4.2m) having a torrid afternoon and being sent off a week after Ben Godfrey (£4.3m) and Nathan Patterson (£3.9m) were torn to shreds by Willian (£5.5m).
Jordan Ayew (£5.2m), again operating on the Palace left flank in the absence of the soon-to-be-fit Wilfried Zaha (£7.2m), was the hosts’ brightest performer as a consequence, registering as many shots as Messrs Eze, Edouard and Olise combined.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£7.9m) made his first start in months, encouragingly lasting 90 minutes, and did provide Everton with a bit more goal threat, whistling one effort narrowly wide of Johnstone’s upright.
PEREIRA: SHOOT ON SIGHT
Above: Andreas Pereira’s attacking output in 2023
Andreas Pereira (£4.4m) has gone shot-mad in recent weeks, registering more goal attempts in his last six matches than any other Premier League player.
While a lot of them have come from distance, his tally of 10 shots in the box over this period is only two short of what he’d managed in the whole of 2022/23 before it. Three big chances also doubles his season’s tally.
It’s tempting to link Aleksandar Mitrovic‘s (£6.6m) absence directly to Pereira’s improved output, with the shot-greedy Serb no longer hogging all the chances, but the two did share the pitch in Gameweeks 26 and 27.
A goalkeeping error from Illan Meslier (£4.5m) helped Pereira find the net against Leeds United but the fact that he was arriving in the box in the first place was a decent sign.
A resurgent Harry Wilson (£5.7m) was also on the scoresheet for the Cottagers, his second goal in as many starts.
Leeds conceded another two goals to go with the 11 they had shipped in the previous week, their own right-back area (like Everton’s) and a substandard central midfield obvious sources of trouble. If he’s fit, Maddison could have a field day on Tuesday night.
