The Curious Case of Richarlison

Richarlison is considered one of those players in the Premier League that makes you feel that he fells short each year performance wise to be considered an established or one of the best in the league. Talented, passionate, and sometimes a troublemaker. He tries to avoid the spotlight as much as possible due to the fact that he is shy and gets nervous in front of the cameras although his personality on the pitch says another story. Everton fans adore Richarlison and for a good reason. He has a work ethic that younger players can look up to, always gives 110% and above all he engages with the club’s community in many ways.

As far as FPL is concerned, Richarlison has been in your team at least once since coming to the Premier League back in 2017 back you most probably ended up transferring him out due to consecutive blanks. Let us dig into his last season stats:

He has scored 13 goals (same as last season), provided 5 assists during his 36 games as a starter for Everton. Considering that he was also booked 8 times it’s fair to say that he is not a season keeper. His xG is not impressive either with only being 9.84 which he outperformed by 3.16 while he underperformed his xA by assisting 3 times with his index being 6.67.

His heatmap shows he lies mainly on the left, his goal attempts are mainly inside the box (71 out of 90 total) with 32 shots on target. His crossing from that side is not impressive having attempted 56 crosses with only 4 being successful granting him a merely 7.1% success rate. Since coming to the Premier League has scored almost equal goals with his right and left foot (12 and 11 respectively) and has scored 7 times with his head.

The other problem with Richarlison as an FPL prospect is that he not taking any penalties or set pieces for his team while there are lot more option within that specific budget that can offer more channel points ie Willian took a number of penalties for Chelsea, especially after the restart.

So why do we keep getting Richarlison in our team? What do we keep missing about this player?

Richarlison failed to score or assist in the 3 opening fixtures against CRY (A), WAT (H) and AVL (A) which objectively are 3 weak sides, he also only played 90 minutes against CRY while he was subbed against WAT and AVL. Then he went on and score twice in a home game against Wolves which is a much better team than the previous three ending the game with 15 points. By that time your patience would have run out and probably transferred him out for another player!

During the next 7 games, he assisted 3 times (against BOU, WHU and BHA) while failed to score any goals until he scored against Southampton. Here is where it gets weird, Richarlison seems to be getting points against lesser teams with that game against Wolves being the exception to the rule, or is it?

After blanking against Norwich he then goes on to score against LEI, LIV and CHE. Is he in your team by now? Probably not, this leaves a sour taste as he seems to be scoring whenever he is out of your team making you feel that you should have held on to him a bit longer.

He scored 13 goals in 12 different matches against 9 different teams with 5 of them being in the Top 6 of the league table by the end of the season. Does this mean he is the player for the big occasions? If that’s true, then why does it seem that he gets lost against the rest of the league? As FPL managers, we chase those “easy” fixtures/schedule for our players, that’s the base for our planning.

Rumour has it that Ancelotti asked him to stay for another year while he is building a team to last and the word on the street is that Richarlison will indeed serve his last season as an Everton player. His manager sees a lot of potential in him setting him a target of 30+ goals for the upcoming season. Is that a lot to ask? It sure is. That doesn’t mean that Richarlison won’t offer us a season to remember before moves away from Everton.