Welcome back, reader.
I’m not a big fan of international football, but it’s hardly the end of the world, since it can’t stop me from pressing some keys on my keyboard. Now that I love.
Do you remember my early-August previews, where I covered all 20 Premier League teams and attached 3 things to watch for each?
Well, today we’ll review those points after five FPL Gameweeks have been completed.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing this and revisiting those pre-season assumptions, and I hope you will too.
Let’s dive straight in!
Arsenal
🥇 Rumours about Ezri Konsa and a new left winger
As usual, some rumours prove true, others not. Ezri Konsa signed for Arsenal in late August, and it took him a while to regain match fitness. Cristian Mosquera’s injury then accelerated the process – the Englishman made his first start in Gameweek 3 and has since played the full 90 minutes three times in a row.
For £4.6m, he offers a cheap way into the Gunners’ defence, being in almost 20% of FPL teams as of writing. So far, he’s on 7.40 DEFCONs/90, hitting the threshold once and coming close once more. He also had a nice shot from a corner.
At that price tag, that’s enough, really, given Arsenal’s clean-sheet prospects.
Arsenal haven’t bought a new left winger.
Christos Tzolis (£6.3m) remains the top choice at that position, but after the initial hype, reality set in. He’s averaged 73 minutes per game, even before the full Champions League/cups frenzy begins, and his goal threat is modest, averaging fewer than 1 shot per game. And those shots aren’t very dangerous.
He’s impactful in real life, adding value in the build-up and creativity in the final third through his passing and runs.
It’s just not that exciting in FPL when you lack goal threat and secure minutes…
His face on FPL Copilot’s player card says it all
🥈 How quickly Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice will be eased back
Bukayo Saka (£9.5m) almost instantly. He played 67 minutes in Gameweek 1, then averaged 87 minutes in the next four games.
Now that Arsenal has Tzolis’ creativity and Odegaard in the number ten position, we’ve been watching an entirely different Saka from last season: he’s doing very little creating in the final third, but he basically lives in the box, receiving extremely close to goal and generating a high volume of great shots.
In that area, he has Haaland-esque numbers not only in surface-level expected metrics but also in more advanced ones. An extremely interesting pick right now.
Let’s see his minutes going forward.
Declan Rice (£7.4m)? Something similar to Saka in terms of minutes played. However, given his current performances, he may warrant more load management…
From a purely footballing perspective, he’s a shadow of himself defensively. Although his football intelligence hasn’t gone anywhere, he’s taking a while to get going.
He’s still producing a good volume of defensive contributions, but only met the threshold in 20% of games.
Not an FPL pick right now at that steep price.
🥉 The dynamics between Declan Rice and Bruno Guimarães
Well, it’s extremely underwhelming. Bruno Guimarães (£6.7m) has been gradually eased back after the injury, so we didn’t really see even 50% of the potential the double pivot could have had.
Aston Villa
🥇 What role will Johan Manzambi play, and when will he be back fit
That’s a hot topic right now.
Sadly, he started just one game, so the information is very limited, even though some people will try to convince you that after those 115 minutes we have everything we need.
We don’t.
The good news is that he played as #10, was pretty trigger-happy, and even scored a goal from the 6-yard box. Villa’s first proper fixture swing comes in Gameweek 11 (maybe GW9 in some scenarios), and by then we’ll know much better.
Definitely one to watch.
Fixtures ranked by expected goals difference using the Solio Analytics model
🥈 Will Alejandro Garnacho become a preferred LW?
With 31 minutes played across those 5 games while reportedly fit, no, it doesn’t seem so.
Unai Emery playing 19-year-old George Hemmings says it all.
And with Johan Manzambi (£5.9m) as number ten and Emi Buendía (£5.9m) a logical first choice at LW, that story is no longer relevant.
🥉 Minutes for Brian Madjo + monitoring Nicolas Jackson rumours
Brian Madjo (£5.4m) was injured in the final pre-season friendly and has been sidelined since.
The rumours about Nicolas Jackson (£6.5m) proved true, and he’s Villa’s new number nine. He’s not excelling, but he isn’t poor either.
No need to rush into buying him: we still need to see more.
Brighton
🥇 Luka Vuškovič, and it’s not even close
Some players never live up to the pre-season hype. Luka Vuškovič (£5.0m) isn’t one of them.
He’s a firm part of Brighton’s centre-back pairing, having played 90 minutes in 80% of games so far, averaging 8.84 DEFCONs/p90, hitting the threshold twice and narrowly missing it twice.
Also, as expected, his goal threat is huge, and he’s their most frequent shooter from set pieces. Brighton have also kept three clean sheets already, which has propelled him to 5th place among the game's highest-scoring defenders.
🥈 Will they pick up where they left off defensively?
That leads me nicely on to another point.
Clean sheets are there, but they are ranked 7th worst in xG conceded, despite that Aston Villa demolition in GW1.
While their frantic pressing and counter-pressing clearly work in the offence, it also sees them regularly allowing extremely dangerous shots – it happened against all of Chelsea, Leeds, Coventry and Arsenal.
They have the league’s worst xG per shot conceded, which clearly shows what’s happening. Looking deeper, they concede a lot of shots, and those shots are often close to goal, especially when defending quick transitions.
❗ Also, their set-piece defending is simply abysmal – 4.3 xG conceded from them in the opening 5 games is one of the most interesting stats of this season so far.
🥉 Georginio vs Kostoulas for #9 role
Rutter’s injury opened the door for Charalampos Kostoulas (£5.6m), and he hasn’t looked back. I’m not surprised. Do you remember the article I wrote about the Greek wonderkid more than a year ago?
During my career in professional football, I identified quite a few talented players and fought some behind-the-scenes battles with Brighton, mostly losing ones, obviously. Kostoulas wasn’t one of them, but I knew instantly when I saw him play.
In the article, I was in awe of his carrying skills, and his advanced metrics truly show the impact his running and dribbling have for Brighton in the final third. It certainly helps him get into the box often and take a lot of good shots.
Rutter is fit to play again, and Promise David waits for his chance, but I can’t imagine Hürzeler is anything other than delighted with Kostoulas.
Bournemouth
🥇 Their overall performances – it’s super important given the juicy fixture swing in GW7
When you factor in their tricky opening fixture run, being ranked 7th for xGC (the gap to 3rd is minimal) isn’t too bad.
Their attack is rather average, but the football they play generally doesn’t hurt your eyes. If you look at more advanced metrics, many things look quite nice given the context of tough fixtures and playing under a new manager.
They are a direct, quick-to-shoot, transitional team, so let’s see how they will unlock some of the more settled blocks.
I wouldn’t be too afraid to pick 1 or 2 of their players once the fixtures turn in GW7.
The current Solio’s expected points
🥈 There are quite a lot of injuries and xMins question marks
Many of these questions have already been answered.
The trio of António Silva (£5.0m), James Hill (£5.5m), and Adrien Truffert (£5.4m) is nailed, and you can say the same about Marcus Tavernier (£6.1m), Alex Scott (£6.1m), Rayan (£6.3m), and Evanilson (£6.0m). That’s a pool of potential picks.
The only worry is the minutes of some of them once the European League group stage starts.
I’ll keep this short, as I will discuss Bournemouth in the Wildcard 6 article.
🥉 Rayan’s output
Rayan’s (£6.3m) output in goals and assists is a big fat zero. When it comes to his performances and underlying stats, the jury is still out.
He shoots a lot, and some of those shots were from pretty nice locations. However, finishing is terrible, and he doesn’t create much.
Let’s discuss him in more depth next week.