Bruno, Brighton & Bandwagons – Solving the FPL wildcard attack

Who are the standout offensive players at the moment?

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In last week’s deep dive, I focused on the defensive side of the current FPL landscape—differentiating between early-season noise and potential signs of a longer-term trend.

The sample size remains tiny, so we must always consider a proper context. However, as you saw last week, we can still make some careful assumptions.

We are now one week closer to the first major fixture swing of the Premier League season, and wildcards are starting to fly. That’s a very good reason to look at what’s happening with midfielders and forwards at the moment.

Let’s see what we can uncover from the current data.

Five at the back? Leeds and Sunderland's strong defences? What the numbers really tell us

Manchester United: Is Bruno a clear wildcard pick?

So far this season, United are conceding 0.157 xG per shot, which is… a lot. In fact, it’s the worst result in the xGC/shot metric across the entire league. However, when it comes to their attack, things look much more positive, at least on the surface.

They have already accumulated 8.56 non-penalty xG, which is the second-best result, just behind Manchester City, despite having quite a challenging opening fixture run, including matches against Arsenal, City, and Fulham. But there’s more context to it.

Not only can we not draw firm conclusions from the game against the 10-man Chelsea side, but they also farmed 42% of the expected goals against Burnley in Gameweek 3.

How serious a problem is that just before the upcoming fixture run of Brentford, Sunderland, Liverpool, Brighton, Nottingham Forest, Spurs, and Everton?

Personally, I’m still weighing the value of £9 million for Bruno Fernandes against that of Bryan Mbeumo (£8.1m) and Matheus Cunha (£8.0m).

In a landscape where few players stand out offensively, Bryan Mbeumo is certainly an outlier. He has been averaging (p90):

• 3.15 non-penalty shots

• 0.41 non-penalty xG

• 0.46 post-shot xG

• 0.13 xG per shot

• 0.24 xA

He has already taken 15 shots, with 11 of them from the box, and he creates good chances from both open play and set pieces.

Matheus Cunha has played only 260 minutes so far, but he looked sharp, and his track record suggests he is likely to pose a significant goal threat.

Bruno is currently averaging about 1 shot per game, with 0.18 non-penalty xG and 0.12 xA on top, which isn’t very impressive for the price. Of course, we can’t ignore penalties and the constant potential for defensive contributions — the penalty has already occurred twice, and the same goes for meeting the DEFCON threshold — but clearly, there are good alternative(s) available.

It’s also team-dependent, as you can perceive the price difference in two ways:

🅰️ I can allocate that £0.9 million to improve my team elsewhere
🅱️ Having a £9 million player is better for my structure, because I can pivot more easily to Saka, Palmer, Salah, or Haaland later on

I would even say that your managerial style strongly comes into play—do you prefer a “good floor, long-term hold” approach or a “high upside in fewer games, then shake things up” strategy at this stage of the season?

There are more layers to consider when selecting your team than simply analysing the players’ overall threat.

Brighton: Who’s the best one?

Rotating one of Brighton’s midfielders in the upcoming fixtures seems like a pretty good idea:

• Wolves are a fixture to target

• We have already talked about United’s defensive problems

• Leeds at home is a solid match-up, even though they are not complete pushovers…

• … and then there are Brentford and Nottingham Forest, up until GW13.

A lot of value to take.

Choosing between Kaoru Mitoma, Yankuba Minteh, and Georginio Rutter always feels like a difficult decision.

This is what I said in last week’s Q&A:

A gameweek later, I would say the same, but with a bit more conviction. Of course, Minteh doing this to Vicario over the weekend helps:

You already know I've always admired Minteh. He’s now in his second Premier League season, and although he’s still raw in some areas of his game, there’s still plenty of room for him to develop. Last season, he was already one of the best creative wingers in the league, and he pretty much picked up where he left off: