His shot volume rose by 350% since GW6, and other interesting FPL stories
New picks, crucial injuries and all the important stories right now
Funny thing—I never really fancied these classic Gameweek reviews, but then, amidst the Christmas chaos, I found out it’s actually a lot of fun to write them if you’re not just throwing game data without context (we don’t do this on Data Dribble) and instead focus on stories.
Usually, there’s plenty to discuss, even though football is a low-scoring affair and scorelines aren’t always the most exciting. That’s what happened last GW.
So, after last week’s more traditional deep dive, let’s do one more review of all the games before freshening it up next week.
Let’s go:
Manchester United 2:0 Manchester City (2.27 - 0.45 xG)
Buckle up. There’s so much to discuss.
Firstly, City are the team that is currently making many FPL managers, myself included, pretty uneasy.
It’s déjà vu, really.
After a rare period of peace, there are, once again, xMins issues driven by injuries and transfers, both completed and in the works. On top of that, Erling Haaland (£15.1m) didn’t score an open-play goal in 8 straight games. Fortunately, the drought will end soon if he’s getting this regularly…
No, seriously, he hasn’t stopped getting into chances, and this will stop eventually. It just shows it can happen to anyone.
There’s a bit of an injury crisis in their backline, with Rúben Dias reportedly set to be on the sidelines for another 4-6 weeks, and Joško Gvardiol potentially missing the rest of the season.
They immediately addressed those issues by signing Marc Guéhi (£5.3m), and are likely pretty happy with that decision after what happened at Old Trafford on Saturday. Some models have this as the highest City xG loss… ever ❗
It doesn’t really matter which data provider you use when looking at one isolated game—the exact numbers don’t matter.
The only thing you need to know is that it was a high figure, because it involved many good shots close to the goal.
In this game, United produced 10 shots inside the box, 5 within the 6-yard box, and at least four of them were of high quality. Oh, and three disallowed goals.
There was a new, exciting vibe around the United team:
Bryan Mbeumo (£8.1m) and Amad Diallo (£6.2m) returned from AFCON. Both were in the starting eleven and impressed with 3 shots. Mbeumo, playing out of position as a number nine, converted one from a counter-attack and amassed 0.80 expected goals as per StatsBomb data via FantasyFootballScout. They now have the 2nd-highest counter-attack xG in the league, just behind Brentford.
Michael Carrick benched Matheus Cunha (and Benjamin Šeško) and started Patrick Dorgu (£4.3m). The former then recorded an assist off the bench, while the latter scored after many bench or sold him (which made sense and still does, because he’s most likely far from being nailed)
Bruno Fernandes (£9.2m) started as a #10 in a 4-2-3-1, with the second-highest average position of touch with the ball, and orchestrated everything on the pitch, recording 6 key passes. Some of them were truly marvellous. He even got his DEFCON 2-pointer and ended up with 10 points.
He took some runs behind and had a goal ruled out for offside after one of those. There are now zero reasons not to buy him in GW24. And not to eye Mbeumo when you can—not only because of this game, but because of how his data look across the whole-season sample size.
Casemiro (£5.5m), Martinéz (£4.8m) and Maguire (£4.3m) put in good shifts and allowed very little to City. Still, that’s hardly a signal. Let’s see what happens next with their defence.
Back to the team in the blue corner, with a great deal of uncertainty.
Nico O’Reilly (£5.2m) failed to start at left-back and now faces competition from Rayan Ait-Nouri (£5.7m) and Nathan Aké (£5.3).
Antoine Semenyo (£7.6m) was included, but Rayan Cherki (£6.7m) was not, and Phil Foden (£8.6m) was hooked off at half-time. There was speculation he had injured his hand, but Pep told the media after the game that “it was his decision”. Later, he admitted that the Englishman “has a little bit broken his bones, but he has protection, and he’s fine for tomorrow”. We’re living in a bad reality show.
The truth is, Omar Marmoush (£8.3m) is back as well, which complicates matters for us even more. You can now craft several narratives after yesterday’s Bodo/Glimt game about who’s starting and who’s not in that Wolves game, but you can’t be really sure. It’s becoming a pure guessing game, and probably something you don’t waste your energy on.
Also, there are growing rumours that City are pursuing a deal for Elliot Anderson.
Chelsea 2:0 Brentford (1.59 - 1.52 xG)
There were about a thousand questions surrounding this game before kick-off.
That game unfolded almost as I predicted in last week’s deep dive—Brentford posed a greater positional threat, created better chances in open play, and were a constant threat on counters.
What I got wrong was that Kevin Schade (£7.1m) had the better game than Igor Thiago (£7.2m) did.
Also, there weren’t many counter-pressing opportunities for Brentford, as the majority of Robert Sánchez’s (£4.9m) 33 passes were long. Chelsea’s analytics department probably noticed the same as I did and tried not to risk building up from the back against Andrew’s unit. However, his passes weren’t too successful, and they will likely revert to Rosenior’s old way of playing in more suitable match-ups. In terms of shot-stopping, a nice performance.
A lot of Chelsea’s xG came from a penalty converted by Cole Palmer (£10.4m), who was otherwise objectively poor in that game. I think it’s safe to say he’s playing through a lot of pain. However, even with discomfort, he fought on the pitch and earned defcon points.
He still doesn’t feel like a safe FPL pick at the moment.
Last week, I also discussed the potential Moisés Caicedo (£5.7m)-Andrey Santos (£4.5m) double pivot, but it didn’t happen, and the latter was introduced in the 57th minute of the game.
That means that Enzo Fernandéz (£6.5m) started alongside Caicedo, which usually doesn’t hurt his final product much this season, although it’s true that the goal threat is higher when he plays as a number ten:
