Teams are falling apart, captaincy is wide open. How to profit?
I analysed every key GW30 storyline so you don’t have to
I know that moving from the FA Cup weekend back to the regular action can be challenging, so I’ve decided to cover all the most-discussed topics of Gameweek 30.
There will be Erling Haaland, Liverpool, Bruno Fernandes, Aston Villa, Newcastle, captaincy, or Spurs.
Plenty to discuss: let’s get straight into it.
Aston Villa: That freefall has a simple explanation
The other day, I realised how incredibly early I became a full-time football data analyst.
Little is known that the Spurs were pioneers in that industry. Some describe it as “best kept secret from the rest of the footballing world”.
Then there was Ian Graham and his Liverpool data revolution in 2012, Arsenal acquiring the StatDNA company in the same year (but they truly integrated it much, much later), or the parallel wave of Matthew Benham’s and Tony Bloom’s projects at Brentford/FC Midtjylland and Brighton, along with the well-known history of an analytic approach at RB Leipzig.
In 2016, Slavia Prague hopped on that new, slowly emerging trend that only a few teams truly utilised. We were among the first in Europe to integrate data analytics directly into the decision-making process in the transfer market.
At many other clubs, analysts constantly fought battles to earn the trust of the “football people”. We had it from the very beginning.
What this means is that I saw a lot.
And sure, there were some outliers and asterisk events, but more often than not, when a team fails to create enough good chances and, at the same time, regularly concedes them, it can’t work for long.
Additionally, injuries to key players can instantly transform a team’s overall performance.
Aston Villa are a great example of all this.
The picture above shows OPTA’s expected points for the whole season so far. Let’s break it down into smaller parts to better understand what’s happening.
During the first 15 games of the 2025/26 Premier League season, the Villans were 16th in the expected points (xPoints) table with around 18 xPoints. In reality, they sat third in the league table with 30 points.
Over the following fourteen games, their overall performance remained largely unchanged, resulting in 19 xPoints.
But the influx of points slowed. They earned 21, which aligns more closely with what we see on the pitch.
They are rather a mid-table team both offensively and defensively, according to not only basic expected metrics but also more advanced ones. Also, the worrying sign is the fact that they faced some of the easiest fixtures between GWs 20 and 29.
One of the reasons they weren’t able to dominate in games you’d expect them to was the concurrent injuries of three key players: Boubacar Kamara, Youri Tielemans, and John McGinn.
They aren’t the ones with massive final products, yet they have a massive influence on the game, offering an interesting mix of defensive stability, control in the build-up, and vision for the final pass. This is essentially how I’d describe Tielemans, who is also one of the most press-resistant players in the league and capable of executing difficult passes under pressure.
They are also still in the Europa League and will travel to Lille on Thursday, which leaves them less time to recover. The last three poor Premier League games were rather a signal than a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances.
Captaincy is pretty open this gameweek.
If you’re unsure about Haaland’s minutes and can’t easily get to Liverpool players, who face demoralised Spurs, I agree that Bruno Fernandes (£10.1m) remains a good choice again this week.
United have a nice potential to hurt Villa from different types of attack, and Bruno is heavily involved in everything that happens in the final third of the pitch, so it’s an unparalleled floor, with a pretty tangible ceiling when everything clicks.
I’ve already discussed several times over the past weeks what a berserk he’s running creatively in the #10 role, and the trend should continue.
One final note for this section:
Although I don’t think Aston Villa is a terrible fixture for your players, they will also enter a fantastic fixture run in Gameweek 31, which will last for 6 GWs. That mass selling of Morgan Rogers (£7.5m) might be a bit premature.
There are key players. And then there’s him
Some players hold immense value beyond just scoring and providing assists: they are crucial in the chain of events that precede them, and when they get injured, much of the team’s dynamics changes.
That’s a very relevant topic for Newcastle at the moment.
Though I should quickly add that the player in question certainly contributed a fair share of the final product this season…
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