Is Harry Wilson the best finisher in the world? (you might be surprised...) 🧵
Harry Wilson, Bournemouth’s new winger, Jørgen Strand Larsen and more
Welcome back, my friends!
The release of the long-forgotten free edition of my newsletter is the second most important event this week, after the Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw takeover of the internet (the Double Gameweek 26 announcement completes the top 3).
Let’s hope there aren’t any more Christmas or flu outbreaks anytime soon.
Anyway, this is meant to be a shorter yet still quite nerdy counterpart to my Data Dribble deep dives, so let’s dive straight in.
Harry Wilson: Is this season a total outlier?
It happens several times every FPL season.
Someone goes on an unsustainable goal-scoring run full of out-of-the-box bangers, and when you try to point out that their production will slow down eventually, you’ll get the classic lecture:
xG doesn’t account for a player’s quality. He’s a FANTASTIC finisher!
Lionel Messi and Harry Kane are fantastic finishers. If you’re saying this about 90% of strikers on a heater, it sort of loses its meaning…
Look, I need to dispel this idea that someone is a world-class finisher just because they’ve scored a few screamers over the last 10 games. You need a lot more shots to say that. And there are very few of them in football…
Anyway, could Wilson actually be the one gifted with elite ball-striking?
Fortunately, he’s 28 years old, so we have a sufficiently large sample size to delve into it and reach some reasonable closure. It’s 8 seasons and 600 shots—that’s a hefty amount.
He overperformed his xG in 89% of his Premier League and Championship seasons. I don’t have 17/18 data from his Hull spell, but given he scored 7 goals in just 996 minutes back then, I think it’s safe to say he also overperformed. That means it happened in 8 of the 9 previous seasons…
In the last eight campaigns, he amassed 42 expected goals, 46 post-shot xG, and scored 59 non-penalty goals.
He converted 9.5% of his shots—nothing out of the ordinary. Something you’d expect given his shot distribution.
Out of his 600 shots, 253 are outside the box, which is 42%. He does it a lot…
From outside the box, he already scored 22 goals (from 12 xG).
He scored 3 screamers this season. It’s still nothing compared with the 18/19 season at Derby County, when he recorded 74 shots outside the box and scored 7 bangers.
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say he’s a great finisher. Not the best in the world, but definitely among the best in the Premier League.
Although his goal-scoring numbers are extreme this season and WILL regress to a more sustainable level, we don’t know when or by how much. As long as there is solid shot volume, he should be fine even with a more human-level run.
Since Gameweek 12, to work with a more current sample size, he averages 2.66 non-penalty shots (and 0.16 np xG), so the volume is certainly there. Let’s also not forget his 51 assists during his senior career, and that he’s on 0.19 expected goals assisted in that same period.
Unless there’s a signal that something changed, that’s quite a nice final product for someone who costs just £6.1 million, certainly from Gameweek 27 onwards.
Also, Fulham are now a team to monitor with AFCON players back. I discussed it here.
Who’s the new Bournemouth winger, Rayan?
Rayan (£5.5m) is a 19-year-old winger who played about 3,150 minutes and scored 14 goals in the 2025 Brazilian Serie A.
Typologically, he’s more of a goal-scoring winger than a creator.
Last season, he averaged:
2.60 non-penalty shots (about 95th percentile)
0.23 non-penalty xG (90th)
0.24 post-shot xG
0.35 non-penalty goals (95th)
0.07 xA (50th)
Those numbers don’t look too bad, but there are some red flags when comparing his xG with post-shot xG, shot locations, and goals scored.
Firstly, he scored 12 non-penalty goals from about 7.5 xG, which is a big discrepancy, and we still can’t say how good a finisher he’s historically been.
He certainly can get into chances from central areas, but of his 90 shots, 47 are outside the box—that’s 52%.
So, yeah, he can’t do this in the Premier League, though I’m sure Iraola will explain it to him.
He took 12 headers, 13 attempts with his left foot, and 65 with his right. Although he doesn’t take many headers in the box, he’s actually pretty good in the air. He’s also a good runner and carrier who can draw a solid number of fouls while remaining disciplined.
Given that he comes from a much lower-quality league, is 19 years old, overperformed his xG, and his shot distribution needs some serious work, it’s hard to imagine he’ll become an amazing FPL pick right away.
I wouldn’t rush to buy him. I’d go with more time-tested midfield picks. It’s a position you don’t want to be wrong on. It’s possible Bournemouth struck gold with him—their scouting department knows what they do—but it might take some time.
There’s someone I respect a lot who says that Rayan has the “perfect profile as a winger for the modern Premier League”.
Still, he’s raw. You wouldn’t order something that raw in a restaurant.
And the restaurant is your FPL team here.
Jørgen Strand Larsen: New Crystal Palace striker?
Crystal Palace reportedly have a new striker, Jørgen Strand Larsen.
… or they don’t:
We’ll find out soon enough.
Anyway, since finishing is the main theme of today’s newsletter, let’s stick with it for a little longer.
Earlier this week, I saw someone say that Strand Larsen is a clinical finisher.
My initial reaction was something like, okay, that’s enough Twitter for today. But the truth is, he’s actually pretty solid.
His 14-goal run from the previous season was driven by a significant overperformance across 54 shots, and about 10 xG. He even scored both shots he took outside the box. The volume wasn’t the highest, just under two attempts per ninety minutes, but the shot map looked pretty nice:
In two seasons at Celta Vigo, he certainly wasn’t wasteful, with expected and actual goals on par, and we also have another couple of seasons at Groningen. There, he placed his shots magnificently over quite a large sample size.
He’s definitely not a wasteful type like Tolu Arokodare or the new West Ham striker Taty Castellanos.
The only problem is his performance this season…
In 1.500+ minutes, there was absolutely nothing. No shots, poor movement in the box, very little activity there, and an inability to receive the ball in dangerous areas. It was one of the worst performances by a Premier League forward I’ve seen in a long time. We can only speculate what exactly happened. Often, it’s a combination of on- and off-pitch factors.
But he’s certainly one to monitor given the upcoming Crystal Palace fixtures:
It is also pretty safe to say that Jean-Philippe Mateta is moving somewhere if this happens, and it could reportedly be Nottingham Forest, which would be a pretty strange decision, if you ask me. However, there are still strong reports that he could end up in Serie A.
So, let’s see.
You’ve got this
This is normally where you’d find the ‘Data Crime of the Week’ segment.
Don’t worry, it’s still Gotham City out there on FPL 𝕏.
But this week, I have some words of encouragement instead.
If the first half of your season’s been rough, there’s no reason the second half can’t be brilliant—you keep playing well, plan for fixture swings, execute your chip strategy accordingly, and maybe even get a hot run on top of that. It’s already happened to so many people, maybe even you, in previous seasons.
What helps mentally is to draw a line somewhere.
It’s similar to a New Year’s resolution—the only difference is that it’s not January 1st but a halfway point in the season, for example. Whatever happened, happened.
All you see now is this:
Clean slate.
15 Gameweeks.
Keep making good decisions, and there’s a good chance you’ll turn the season around.
It’s been another busy week in our Data Dribble premium community.
In Tuesday’s deep dive, I analysed the “new” Premier League and all the viable midfield options:
• The one stat that explains why Bryan Mbeumo scores goals
• Midfield essentials, budget gems, and future bandwagons
• The Premier League trend that’s 108% more popular than last season (!)
• Oh, and there are FAR fewer open-play goals than last season…
I recommend you check it out:
Last Friday,
In yesterday’s article, I discussed chip strategy, wildcards, captaincy, mindset, and one match-up that almost everyone is misreading:
Last Friday’s “all you want to know about chips” special.
See you next Friday!