The FPL Digest: Watford’s entertainers promise goals at both ends

Our Gameweek 22 coverage ends with this critique of a player, team and discussion point that attracted our interest in the weekend’s matches.

Richarlison‘s FPL price and ownership continue to drop after a third straight blank – we’ll take a closer look at the Brazilian midfielder and his current output.

Watford are the in-form team outside of the “big six”, so we’ll also assess their potential FPL impact over the coming Gameweeks.

Finally, we take a brief look at the implications of that “other” big injury of this week – the knee problem that has sidelined Trent Alexander-Arnold for up to a month.

The Player – Richarlison

Richarlison (£6.9m) is the third-most-sold Fantasy Premier League midfielder of Gameweek 23 at the time of writing, having blanked in each of his last three starts and having averaged three FPL points per match in the last six Gameweeks.

A likely Gameweek 27 blank and the downturn in fixtures thereafter, along with a lack of recent returns, are legitimate reasons to ditch the Brazilian midfielder, especially in a position where there are so many appealing premium alternatives and where money can now be reinvested for those selling the injured Harry Kane (£12.5m).

With Everton near the top of our Season Ticker for the next four Gameweeks, however, are managers jettisoning Richarlison a month too early?

The Brazil international’s performance against Bournemouth on Sunday caught our eye for a number of reasons.

Anonymous in the opening 45 minutes, Richarlison’s first-half showing reflected that of his team’s, who looked riddled with anxiety and frustration as the Goodison Park faithful grew increasingly restless at yet another listless showing on home soil.

The Toffees had only won one of their previous seven matches and Bournemouth’s control in the early exchanges suggested that the match was heading in the same direction as the disappointing home fixtures against Newcastle, Watford and Leicester in the past month.

The Toffees and Richarlison gradually grew into the match and the Brazilian could easily have got on the scoresheet after the interval, having a shot cleared off the line by Nathan Ake (£5.0m) and flashing a header just wide of the Bournemouth goal from a Gylfi Sigurdsson (£7.3m) cross.

The hard-luck story mirrored the 1-0 defeat to Brighton in Gameweek 20, when Richarlison was only a David Button (£4.0m) fingertip and post’s width away from finding the back of the net.

In the last three Gameweeks, no FPL midfielder – not even Mohamed Salah (£13.4m) or Paul Pogba (£8.5m) – has had as many shots in the opposition box as Richarlison. Only three players in his position have registered more penalty box touches over this period, meanwhile.

Everton’s opposition in those three matches – Brighton, Leicester and Bournemouth – were similar to the calibre of team they will face in the coming four Gameweeks: Southampton (a), Huddersfield (a), Wolves (h) and Watford (a).

The Saints and managerless Huddersfield lie in the bottom three for home form this season, while those two teams plus Watford rank among the worst seven clubs for “big chances” conceded over the last six Gameweeks.

Underlying stats are one thing, of course, and the eye test is another.

Richarlison never stops grafting for his side but he can occasionally cut a frustrated figure, especially when deployed up front and starved of meaningful service by the often pedestrian build-up play behind him.

Despite the Brazilian’s personal stats being impressive, Everton have looked largely plodding against mid-table fodder over the last three Gameweeks – something that doesn’t perhaps bode well for the four matches ahead.

The anxiety over Richarlison is, much like Eden Hazard‘s (£11.1m) own Fantasy appeal, less about his own ability and more concerned with the team that surrounds him.

It may be that, away from the pressures of an expectant home crowd at Goodison, the Toffees can cut loose on the road in the coming month as they did at Burnley on Boxing Day – even if the subsequent defeat at Brighton somewhat damaged that argument.

In the interests of transparency, this writer is considering a Richarlison exit of his own in order to facilitate other moves. The possibility of that potential sale being four Gameweeks too early, of course, is a very real one.

The Team – Watford

There were any number of teams that could have been the focus of this analysis off the back of Gameweek 22 but we have chosen to concentrate on a side that have perhaps flown under the Fantasy radar of late: Watford.

Outside of the “big six”, the Hornets are the Premier League’s form team over the last six Gameweeks.

Javi Gracia’s side have only lost once in that time – a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in December – and have plundered more goals (12) than any other side outside of the aforementioned top half-dozen clubs.

Watford also sit fifth in our Season Ticker over the next five Gameweeks, with fixtures against Burnley, Brighton and Cardiff to come during that sequence of matches.

It is perhaps prudent, then, to take a cursory look at the Hornets’ recent form, not just for the value their own Fantasy assets are offering but also how their performances could impact on Spurs and Everton – two teams Watford face in the next four Gameweeks and whose players are more widely owned in FPL.

Scoring two goals at Selhurst Park is no mean feat: Palace’s defence had kept clean sheets in three of their previous four league matches at home and had only been breached once when Chelsea visited south London in Gameweek 20.

Watford may have scored with their only two shots on target in Saturday’s fixture but they matched the Eagles for attempts in the opposition box and bettered their hosts for overall efforts on goal.

Gracia’s side also missed two “big chances” early on when Gerard Deulofeu (£5.5m) and Roberto Pereyra (£6.3m) struck the post with shots in the very same attack, while Troy Deeney (£5.9m) had a deflected second-half effort hacked off the line – all attempts on goal that weren’t registered as “shots on target” by Opta but which could so easily have found their way into the Palace net.

Watford’s underlying attacking statistics bode well for the visit of Burnley, who still rank second-worst for shots on target, big chances and goals conceded in the Premier League this season, despite recent defensive improvements.

The Clarets have also allowed more shots in the box than any other top-flight side in 2018/19.

Sean Dyche’s side are in fact the only club outside of the “big six” to have carved out more big chances than Watford over the last eight Gameweeks, while Bournemouth and West Ham are the only two sides outside of the top half-dozen places to have registered more shots on target during that time.

Pereyra and Abdoulaye Doucoure (£5.9m) rank in the top eight FPL midfielders for shots on goal from Gameweeks 15-22, with only Hazard and Salah having more “big chances” than Doucoure during that period.

Twenty-five of Doucoure and Pereyra’s combined efforts in that timeframe were from inside the box.

Since Deulofeu returned to the starting XI in Gameweek 17, only Hazard and Salah have bettered the former Barcelona midfielder for “big chances” among players in their position.

Watford, then, surely have the potential to spoil the clean sheets of Spurs and Everton in Gameweeks 24 and 26.

Gracia’s side haven’t failed to find the net in the last eight Gameweeks (only Liverpool and Manchester United can say the same) and although they face Spurs at Wembley in Gameweek 24, the Hornets are unbeaten in their last four away league fixtures.

Defensively, however, Watford still leave much to be desired.

Those who own the likes of Christian Eriksen (£9.3m), Dele Alli (£8.9m), Richarlison and/or Sigurdsson will be heartened to hear that no side has kept fewer clean sheets than the Hornets (one) since the start of November.

In the last eight Gameweeks, no club has allowed more “big chances” or headed opportunities than Gracia’s team.

The Hornets also rank second-worst (or joint-19th) for shots in the box and attempts on target conceded during that time.

We should expect goals and plenty of them from Watford, who don’t have a single asset costing more than £6.3m in FPL for those Fantasy managers considering budget/mid-price offensive options.

While their “entertainers” tag may be bad news for any defensive assets that encounter Watford in the coming weeks, Fantasy managers will have high hopes of an attacking points haul from any of their offensive players that cross paths with the Hornets imminently.

The Talking Point – Trent Alexander-Arnold’s Injury

Talk of Harry Kane’s injury has dominated in the Fantasy community over the last 72 hours and indeed was the focus of one of our articles on Wednesday morning.

While not quite as earth-shifting news, Tuesday’s revelation that Trent Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m) will be sidelined for up to a month with a knee ligament injury left plenty of Fantasy managers with a selection dilemma going into Gameweek 23.

More than one in five FPL managers owned Alexander-Arnold before news broke of his unavailability and there are few Fantasy defenders who can offer the same returns for such little financial outlay: the Liverpool and England right-back is the third-best value-for-money defender in FPL this season, returning 17.9 points per million spent.

The best-value FPL defender of 2018/19 is team-mate Andrew Robertson (£6.7m) and the obvious move for Alexander-Arnold owners with cash to burn (perhaps from a Kane sale) is an upgrade to the Scottish left-back or Virgil van Dijk (£6.4m) – Liverpool have kept three more clean sheets (13 in total) than any other Premier League side this season and next face a double-header against Palace and Leicester at Anfield, where Jurgen Klopp’s side have conceded only three league goals all season.

There isn’t an attractive, like-for-like replacement at Liverpool in the same price bracket, though, with Joe Gomez and Dejan Lovren (both £4.9m) not scheduled to return until after Gameweek 23 (at least) and Joel Matip (£4.9m), even if match-fit this weekend, not offering the security of starts beyond the visit of Roy Hodgson’s side.

Ricardo Pereira (£5.3m) is the leading FPL points-scorer for defenders priced at £5.5m or under but even accounting for Leicester’s recent superb form against so-called “bigger” clubs, their run of fixtures in the next four Gameweeks (wol, liv, MUN, tot) deters investment for the time being.

Lucas Digne (£5.3m) is another obvious sideways move but Everton have three away matches in the next four Gameweeks (the Toffees have kept only one clean sheet on the road this season) and then a likely blank in Gameweek 27.

Digne’s attacking appeal, of course, is what sets him apart from many other Fantasy pretenders: the French left-back has supplied ten more key passes than the next-most creative FPL defender in 2018/19.

The former Barcelona defender also ranks fourth for attempts on goal among defenders this campaign.

It may be 14 Gameweeks since he last delivered a double-digit haul but Matt Doherty (£5.2m), for those that don’t own him already, certainly has the fixtures to back up his impressive underlying attacking stats.

Wolves have kept only one shut-out since Doherty’s 15-point bonanza at Palace in Gameweek 8 but if there was such a thing as a “clean sheets imminent” table, Nuno Espirito Santo’s side would surely be near the top: last season’s Championship winners rank joint-second for fewest “big chances” conceded in 2018/19.

Their next seven opponents all rank in the bottom half of the table for “big chances” created in the last six Gameweeks, too.

The three defenders mentioned immediately above, of course, all enjoy double-digit FPL ownership already.

Sitting in 7.1% of Fantasy squads, Luke Shaw (£5.0m) is a stand-out candidate among the “best of the rest”.

Manchester United come into this weekend off the back of successive clean sheets (doubling their tally for 2018/19 to four) and, since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took charge, have conceded the joint-fewest number of goals in the Premier League.

Only three top-flight sides have allowed fewer “big chances” than United since the Norwegian’s tenure began although there is still legitimate cause for concern at the back: David de Gea (£5.7m) was called on to make 11 saves in Sunday’s 1-0 win over Spurs.

Still, United’s fixtures are among the very best in the coming Gameweeks: their next four opponents all sit in the bottom seven for shots in the box in 2018/19.

Finally, for those owners of Liverpool defenders who worry that Alexander-Arnold’s absence weakens the Reds’ backline: the injured right-back has missed five Premier League matches this season and Klopp’s side have kept clean sheets in four of them.

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