Our coverage of the weekend’s matches continues with a look back at the events at Goodison Park, where West Ham United ran out surprise 3-1 winners to lift themselves off the bottom of the Premier League table.
Marko Arnautovic (£7.0m) served another reminder of his appeal as a mid-priced Fantasy Premier League forward despite the Hammers’ poor run of form and fixtures, though the Austrian limped from the field just after the hour mark with a knee injury that the striker himself said is “hurting a little bit”.
Theo Walcott (£6.7m) won his own fitness battle to take his place in Marco Silva’s starting XI, but the Everton winger left his legions of FPL owners disappointed for the second Gameweek in a row with another blank.
Andriy Yarmolenko (£6.8m) was instead the headline-making act on Merseyside, scoring the Hammers’ opening two goals on his first league start for his new employers.
Everton 1-3 West Ham United
- Goals: Gylfi Sigurdsson (£7.4m) | Andriy Yarmolenko (£6.8m) x2, Marko Arnautovic (£7.0m)
- Assists: Jonjoe Kenny (£4.3m) | Marko Arnautovic, Mark Noble (£4.9m), Pedro Obiang (£4.4m)
The debate over form versus fixtures has reared its head in recent weeks, most notably when discussing which/how many Liverpool assets are necessary for the Reds’ current tricky sequence of matches.
Marko Arnautovic’s 12-point haul at Goodison Park on Sunday afternoon was a reminder of his own ability to accrue points no matter how “difficult” the fixture.
The Austrian delivered attacking returns in away matches against Chelsea and Arsenal in the final six Gamweeks of 2017/18 and his rate of goal involvements per minute was actually superior on the road last season.
That Arnautovic is ranked joint-third for points among FPL forwards this campaign – only the more-heralded Sergio Aguero (£11.4m) and Aleksandar Mitrovic (£6.8m) are ahead of him – despite playing in a side that was pointless before Gameweek 5 and languishing near the bottom of our Season Ticker is a testament to his Fantasy appeal.
Granted, Arnautovic will seldom come up against a defence as obliging as Everton’s. Beset by injury problems and without Seamus Coleman (£5.3m), Yerry Mina (£5.4m) and Michael Keane (£4.9m), the Toffees were cut open time and time again by the Hammers on the counter-attack.
The Merseyside club are one of five top-flight teams without a clean sheet this season and indeed a side managed by Marco Silva hasn’t recorded a shut-out in 16 matches.
Mason Holgate (£4.5m) and Kurt Zouma (£5.0m) had a particularly torrid afternoon at centre-back, the pair being all-too-easily bypassed by a looping Pedro Obiang (£4.4m) through-ball that set Arnautovic free for West Ham’s opener – the former Stoke City man unselfishly squaring for Yarmolenko to finish from close range.
Obiang and Arnautovic combined nicely for West Ham’s third goal, with Holgate again culpable as Arnautovic finished the one-two by prodding past Jordan Pickford (£5.0m).
Pickford had been partly responsible for Yarmolenko and West Ham’s second strike, with the Ukrainian winger capitalising on some poor distribution from the England goalkeeper to curl home the goal of the match.
When asked about the extent of his injury, Arnautovic said:
I don’t know. We have to check now, it’s not my calf, it’s behind my knee. It is hurting a little bit. We are checking this week how it is going and we will see.
The positive signs were that Arnautovic was able to walk from the field and put weight on his affected knee but the coming days should tell us if the injury is anything other than minor. A spell on the sidelines would be a blow to the Hammers given Arnautovic’s talismanic role: the Austrian has been directly involved in four of West Ham’s five goals this season and seven of their last ten stretching back to the end of 2017/18.
From a Fantasy perspective, Arnautovic’s returns might have been considered fortuitous: his goal and assist coming from just one attempt on goal and a solitary key pass. Only two strikers have had more penalty box touches than Arnautovic over the course of the season, however, and the West Ham forward is averaging a chance more often than the likes of Wilfried Zaha (£7.0m), Cenk Tosun (£6.9m), Callum Wilson (£6.3m) and Josh King (£6.3m) in the mid-price bracket.
Yarmolenko’s brace also came from the Ukrainian’s only two shots on goal, with the former Borussia Dortmund and Dynamo Kyiv winger not creating a single chance all match.
The knee-jerk reaction to Yarmolenko’s performance in FPL has been sensibly modest, with less than 4,000 managers snapping him up at the time of writing, and much more evidence will be required before we talk about him as a viable mid-price midfield option.
The Hammers’ summer signing looks to have nailed his place on the flank in the short term at least, with Pellegrini having this to say about the Ukrainian wide-man and his patient wait for a first start:
He arrived late in the pre-season with us and that’s why we didn’t start him in the Premier League so far, because he needed to improve a lot with the pace.
He has a lot of quality and he has demonstrated that in every game, but he was not ready to play in the Premier League after he just arrived.
We were patient with him, talking with him, working with him and I’m very happy for him that today when I thought he was ready he demonstrated it.
Yarmolenko was one of six changes made by Pellegrini to his starting XI, with the all-new central midfield three of Obiang, Mark Noble (£4.9m) and “out of position” Declan Rice (£4.4m) impressing in the engine room. Pablo Zabaleta (£4.3m) and Arthur Masuaku (£4.5m) also returned at full-back.
Silva meanwhile made only two alterations to his line-up, with Jonjoe Kenny (£4.3m) replacing Coleman at right-back and Idrissa Gueye (£4.9m) returning from injury to oust Tom Davies (£5.4m) from the double-pivot.
Theo Walcott also won his fitness race to be included in the Everton starting XI, although his remaining owners (Walcott was the second-most-sold player of Gameweek 5) might have wished he hadn’t after another blank in which he had only one shot on goal and didn’t create a single chance.
Gylfi Sigurdsson (£7.4m) headed in Everton’s only goal of the match just before half-time, with the Icelandic midfielder nodding home Kenny’s cross – the second successive season in which the 21-year-old full-back has provided an assist in a home match against West Ham.
Kenny and Lucas Digne (£4.8m) were rare bright sparks on an otherwise wretched afternoon for Everton, with both providing some dangerous deliveries from the flank: Digne denied two assists when the disappointing Tosun could only head his pinpoint cross straight at Lukasz Fabianski (£4.5m) before substitute Oumar Niasse (£5.3m) blazed another Digne centre against the bar.
Digne created more big chances, made more key passes and sent over more crosses than any player on show at Goodison Park yesterday, with only Sigurdsson having more shots than the Everton left-back. Digne was also prominent at set-piece situations, taking both indirect and direct free-kicks.
Available for only £4.8m, he would ordinarily be a defender to consider given his underlying attacking statistics – but Everton’s dearth of clean sheets and the continual risk of rotation with Leighton Baines (£5.4m) means he remains far down on the watchlist.
Sigurdsson’s sudden propensity to open fire bucked the trend of the season so far, with five of the Icelandic midfielder’s seven shots in 2018/19 coming on Sunday afternoon.
Bernard (£5.9m) showed glimpses of promise after his introduction on the left flank just before the break, with Silva switching from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2 in a bid to peg back the Hammers’ two-goal advantage.
Richarlison (£6.6m) served out the final match of his suspension and, along with Bernard, will now come into contention for the trip to Arsenal in Gameweek 5 – Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£5.4m) and even Walcott’s starting places could be at some risk at the Emirates next weekend.
Everton (4-2-3-1): Pickford; Kenny, Holgate, Zouma, Digne; Gueye, Schneiderlin (Bernard 44′); Walcott (Lookman 77′), Sigurdsson, Calvert-Lewin; Tosun (Niasse 69′)
West Ham United (4-3-3): Fabianski; Zabaleta, Balbuena, Diop, Masuaku; Noble (Sanchez 71′), Rice, Obiang; Yarmolenko (Snodgrass 82′), Anderson, Arnautovic (Antonio 64′)
READ MORE GAMEWEEK 5 SCOUT NOTES
- Spurs 1-2 Liverpool
- Bournemouth 4-2 Leicester
- Chelsea 4-1 Cardiff
- Huddersfield 0-1 Crystal Palace
- Man City 3-0 Fulham
- Newcastle 1-2 Arsenal (coming soon)
- Watford 1-2 Man United (coming soon)
- Wolves 1-0 Burnley
- Everton 1-3 West Ham
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