With Fantasy Premier League (FPL) live for 2024/25, we’re welcoming back our team of Hall of Famers and guest writers. Here, eight-time top 10k finisher Zophar uses StatsBomb data to explain why Josko Gvardiol and Daniel Munoz make his latest squad draft.
As we get closer to the start of the season, it’s important to start locking in a few more spots in our Gameweek 1 teams, to avoid being lured by the latest pre-season hat-trick bandwagon. Of course, we don’t yet need to finalise the entire 15 but I think being certain on some picks allows us to focus more on trying to get the 50/50 decisions correct.
In this article, I’ll talk about how defensive duo Josko Gvardiol (£6.0m) and Daniel Munoz (£5.0m) are very likely to make my starting squad, barring injuries.
JOSKO GVARDIOL
With Scout’s exciting StatsBomb partnership, we now have access to outstanding visuals such as this one. The circles represent headers, whilst colours highlight the expected goals (xG) of each attempt.
While there were a lot of efforts from outside the penalty area, I was surprised to see the sheer volume of shots inside of it. Many derived from open play through balls and his headers inside the six-yard box mostly came from set pieces. He is one of those rare gems who offers goal threat from both these situations but also adds creativity.
As this Members Area image shows, the second half of last season saw no defender have more box touches (51). Munoz is up there as well, joint-fourth with 43. For touches in the final third, Gvardiol trailed only Alfie Doughty.
Furthermore, looking at the latter half, only Andrew Robertson (£6.0m, 205.1) and Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m, 225.1) registered fewer minutes per expected goal involvement (xGI) than Gvardiol (318.1).
Over the entire campaign, Rayan Ait-Nouri (£4.5m, seven) – who briefly filled in as a Wolverhampton Wanderers forward – and Cristian Romero (£5.0m, eight) were the individual defenders to accumulate more big chances than his six.
Again, looking at season-long data, he ranks sixth in his position for xG, even though it wasn’t until later months that he fully adapted to the attacking wing-back role.
DANIEL MUNOZ
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