Wood has proven FPL pedigree – but form is key with the Kiwi

After the surprise capture of Kieran Trippier (£5.0m), the big spending at Newcastle United continued last week with the acquisition of Burnley’s Chris Wood (£6.7m).

Joining for a fee in the region of £25m, Wood does bring some proven Premier League pedigree to Tyneside, having scored 10 or more goals in each of his last four seasons.

Yet the move hasn’t exactly caught the imagination of the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) community, with the New Zealand international’s middling form in 2021/22 plus the lack of a scheduled Double Gameweek for Newcastle meaning that interest so far has been muted.

With the Magpies sitting near the top of our Season Ticker over the next six Gameweeks, we assess the Kiwi striker’s future appeal – or lack of it – in our Moving Target report.

THE HISTORY

Wood made fleeting Premier League appearances with West Brom and Leicester before his big break with Burnley came in 2017/18, and he’s perhaps been underappreciated since.

Not even new teammate Callum Wilson (£7.2m) can say he’s reached the 10-goal mark every year from then onwards, while Wood has hardly benefitted heavily from spot-kick duties like others who can boast of that achievement – there have been only three penalties scored by the Kiwi in his time at Turf Moor.

Also worth noting is that he hasn’t been an ever-present starter at Burnley, not by any distance: he has averaged only 27.5 starts per season in his first four years in Lancashire, despite delivering a respectable 13.5 attacking returns per campaign.

On the underlying stats front, Wood can boast of a pretty good goal conversion rate throughout his time at Burnley (20% is a decent level, as a rule of thumb), although his ‘expected goals’ deltas have not reflected this.

*Shooting Goals Added (or SGA) quantifies finishing ability. It looks at how well a player is shooting compared to the quality of their chances. xG is a measure of underlying chance quality and Expected Goals on Target (xGOT) is a measure of shooting ability. For example, a player whose xGOT is exceeding their xG (a ‘+’ score) is executing better quality shots, given the quality of his chances.

One of the reasons why Wood performs underwhelmingly on the xG front is the fact that many of his chances come from close range. Roughly one in five efforts may find the back of the net but that means that four other opportunities of decent quality (characterized by a higher ‘xG’ score) go begging and lead to the negative scores we see above.

His record of shots in the six-yard box is remarkable over the last few years and he is second behind only Diogo Jota (£8.4m) in 2021/22, so service hasn’t been too much of a problem at Burnley this season despite the goal drought: only one of his 10 attempts from this range in the current campaign has found the back of the net:

THE PROSPECTS

With the injured Wilson out until March, Wood has a clean run at the central striking role in Eddie Howe’s set-up over this favourable six-game stretch.

The New Zealander made an unremarkable debut against Watford, looking isolated at times in his manager’s 4-3-3 system. A lack of service is nothing new for a Newcastle forward: despite Howe’s front-foot reputation, Wilson is at the wrong end of the forwards’ stats table for minutes per shot (50.2) since the change in manager and one of just three big chances in that time came from the penalty spot:

Above: Forwards sorted by minutes per chance from Gameweek 12 onwards

Any teething problems would also be unsurprising given that Wood has been used to playing with a strike partner at Burnley for the best part of four years.

“Chris is getting used to the team and it is slightly different to how he’s used to playing. I thought he led the line well and brought a physical presence to make the ball stick.

“I thought as a team we isolated him in the last period of the game after we scored and that’s something we can’t do.” – Eddie Howe, post-Gameweek 22

Of some encouragement was that the Newcastle new boy managed to get off three goal attempts from in or around the six-yard box, while he was also presented with a one-on-one opportunity by a stray Watford pass before dallying on the ball:

One thing we haven’t touched on, and perhaps the most crucial factor, is form and confidence.

He’s scored just three goals this season and both player and former manager hinted at ennui setting in before his big-money move:

“I’ve been in the Premier League a number of years now, I think I’ve established myself as a proven striker who knows how to score goals.

“I’d been at Burnley for four years, it got to a point where I was in my comfort zone and you never doing anything great when you’re in your comfort zone. So to take my game to the next level, challenging myself at a massive club like Newcastle was the right option and I felt this could be both a great opportunity for me and the club going forward.” – Chris Wood

“He has been performing for a long time and sometimes players do hit a quiet spell. It certainly wasn’t us allowing him to sit in his comfort zone.

“I understand him slightly, maybe he feels he needs a freshness and a difference. I found him an honest fella who knows when he is not doing as well as he can do. He knew he was quieter than what we expected from himself and from us.” – Sean Dyche on Chris Wood’s form before his move

Wood has 17 attacking returns in his last 50 Premier League appearances but 11 of them came in eight run-outs at the back-end of last season.

In his other 42 most recent appearances, he has blanked on 36 occasions.

The softly spoken New Zealander has always seemed like a bit of a confidence player, with similar purple patches arriving at the tail-end of 2017/18 (five goals in five), the second half of 2018/19 (12 attacking returns in 16 starts) and at the start of 2019/20 (six goals in as many games).

Given his current drought and the new surroundings, there seems little going for him at present – but keep his past pedigree in mind for later in the campaign, when Newcastle finally get a Double Gameweek or two and, hopefully, the striker has rediscovered that streaky touch.

And anyone wanting to tap into the Magpies’ decent upcoming run already has a marginally cheaper Allan Saint-Maximin (£6.6m) to consider, with the Frenchman third in the FPL forwards points table and someone who is not just Newcastle’s top shot-taker in the Howe era but also their leading chance creator, too – and assist-making is one area where Wood has struggled in his time in the top flight.