The English Football Thread

[communicate 2,703]

30 minutes ago, Laylabelle said:

True but this season no one is competing with Liverpool. City should be but way way off. Who knows maybe next season add a few players they'll be up there hard to predict. Just case of our slip up happen same time they get together.

I cant see this season being written off. Looking more and more likely be delayed more then anything. Guess the next meetg shed more light 

If they keep spending they will. I have said it a long time ago, with ffp, united as the richest team in England has the upper hand. Eventually they will get back to the top. 

I honestly can't predict what will happen this season. I have stated my prediction but that IF the situation get under control in maybe 1 month. I can see them trying to play in close door first. But if it last more than 2/3 months. I don't know

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,299]

Top sports lawyers believes that unless games can start again in April, then the game’s governing bodies could be forced into cancelling the season and starting it again. This applies to ALL competitions. Unlucky Liverpool....

[chippy 342]

23 hours ago, Laylabelle said:

 

I cant see this season being written off. Looking more and more likely be delayed more then anything. Guess the next meeting shed more light 

As we know the virus is going to become much more widespread over the next few months, so unless matches are played behind closed doors this season will have to be made void.

Hopefully, things will be better by the start of next season.

 

[NikkiCFC 8,286]

Liverpool title aside, they deserve it. But I am curious to see how they will put Man.Utd in the CL next season because they are trying to do it so hard past few weeks/months...

[OneMoSalah 8,883]

I hope they do make the season null and void.

No Liverpool title win. No Leeds getting promoted. No CL and Europa League.

It may seem unfair on Liverpool but at the same time its not fair on everyone who can still finish in the top 4-8 places either. Especially considering how well Wolves and Sheffield have done too this season.

Wait and see the media will be calling it an absolute travesty if the season is null and void. Jamie Carragher will be crying for the next 10 years about it on Sky and in his column. Although Klopp had a statement out saying health and life is more important than football matches so wonder if his opinion will change if the seasons finished and no trophies are won due to this virus.

 

[Vesper 30,091]

Fantasy Premier League: the team of the 2019-20 season (so far)

https://theathletic.com/1674420/2020/03/14/fantasy-premier-league-team-of-the-season-so-far/

With the news that there will be no Premier League football until April 4 at the earliest, I’m going to take stock of the Fantasy Premier League season so far for this week’s column, delving into the underlying statistics of the top-performing players after 29 gameweeks. 

Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we are making transfers and picking captains again…

Goalkeeper

Nick Pope (Burnley) 128 points

Burnley goalkeepers have performed well in FPL over the last few seasons and Pope is no different this year. He’s proved to be a bargain for those who got him for £4.5m way back in Gameweek 1. Selling him on my first wildcard was one of the few mistakes I’ve made this season. Bringing him back in with my second wildcard was a good move. Reversing mistakes is an important aspect of FPL. Don’t be stubborn.  

Pope has kept 11 clean sheets and earned 17 bonus points, the most in each category by any goalkeeper. He ranks seventh among goalkeepers for saves made (89) and keeping out Jamie Vardy’s penalty in GW23 boosted his points total. The only players to have saved two penalties this season are Tim Krul and Rui Patricio. 

In 2017-18, Pope received 19 bonus points on his way to a 152-point season. He’s on course to have his best FPL season to date.

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Defenders

It’s no surprise to see three Liverpool players sitting at the top of the defenders’ chart. The Reds have recorded the most clean sheets (12) and conceded the fewest goals (21). Couple that with the ability of their defenders to get attacking points and you’ve got the most attractive defensive options in the game. 

Jurgen Klopp’s side have conceded just 83 shots on target and boast the lowest xGC (expected goals conceded) in the division (27.79). 

Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool) 166 points

Andy Robertson’s record of 213 points (the highest ever score for a defender in an FPL season) is under threat this time round from his team-mate Alexander-Arnold. He has featured in every league game, scoring two goals and providing 14 assists. And he’s also got more bonus points (18) than any other defender this season.

One of the highlights of 2019-20 for his owners was the match away to Leicester in GW19. A goal, three assists, a clean sheet and maximum bonus points rewarded loyal managers with a whopping 24 points. 

FPL legend John Lundstram (38) is the only defender to have had more goal attempts than Alexander-Arnold (36). The 21-year-old has taken 132 corners, only four players have taken more, all of whom are midfielders. His set-pieces account for a large proportion of his 75 chances created, a statistic that only Kevin De Bruyne (96) can beat. Trent’s xA (expected assists) for the season is 8.36, which is unsurprisingly the highest among defenders.   

Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool) 141 points

Another Liverpool defender having a great fantasy season is Van Dijk. The Dutchman has four goals, one assist and 12 bonus points to his name. 

Having played every minute of every league game, he has one more clean sheet than Alexander-Arnold and Robertson. He is one of only five defenders to have played every minute, with Conor Coady (Wolves), Harry Maguire (Man United), James Tarkowski and Ben Mee (both Burnley) being the others.  

The towering centre-back always looks a threat when he goes forward for set-pieces. He’s registered 23 goal attempts and 10 of them have been on target, which ranks second among defenders behind Wolves’ Matt Doherty (15). 

Andrew Robertson (Liverpool) 137 points

The dream team defence is completed by “Robbo”. Last season’s top-scoring defender is enjoying another productive campaign with one goal and seven assists (he managed 12 assists in 2018-19). Alexander-Arnold is the only defender to have received more bonus points than Robertson’s 15.   

The Scotland captain has featured in all but one of Liverpool’s league matches, missing out on the most recent one against Bournemouth. He’s picked up just one yellow card all season which helps a lot in terms of bonus points. 

Bombing forward from left-back he has created 43 chances, the third-best for defenders behind Alexander-Arnold and Everton’s Lucas Digne (58) in second. Nine of Robertson’s chances created were deemed big chances by Opta, which is bettered only by Alexander-Arnold. Doubling up on the Liverpool full-backs has been successful at certain stages of the season! 

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Midfielders

Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) 186 points

Salah leads the way at the top of the FPL scoring charts and looks set to make it three seasons running as the top points scorer. His team-mate Sadio Mane looks the most likely to stop him from completing the hat-trick.

The Egyptian has scored 16 goals (more than any other midfielder), provided six assists and received 23 bonus points. 

Raul Jimenez (99) is the only player in the league who has fired off more shots than Salah (98). Shots from inside the box is a key metric I always look to for FPL and Salah has 81 of them this season, the most in the division. Forty-three of the former Chelsea man’s attempts have been on target, which is again the best in the league. 

When it comes to chance creation, Salah ranks ninth among midfielders having created 46 chances. He’s touched the ball 248 times in the opposition penalty area, surprise, surprise, the highest number of any player. 

Penalty-taking responsibility attracts FPL managers to players and Salah has scored all three he has taken this season. Salah’s xG (expected goals) of 14.43 ranks second behind Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford’s (14.94). Rashford has taken seven penalties which accounts for a lot of his xG.   

Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City) 178 points

The best player in the league (in my opinion) is smashing it in FPL. After just 29 gameweeks, he’s got eight goals and 18 assists, identical numbers to his best-ever season (2017-18) where he finished on 209 points. He’s well on course to beat his previous best. He needs three more assists to equal his record of 21 from 2016-17. 

De Bruyne managed just 968 minutes of game time last season due to injuries but he has missed just two games this time around with City losing both of those matches, 2-0 to Wolves and Manchester United. City simply haven’t been anywhere near as good when De Bruyne has been absent. 

The Belgian has registered 76 goal attempts and created an astonishing 96 chances. He’s also taken 144 corners, the most in the league alongside Leicester’s James Maddison. 

De Bruyne ranks first for final-third touches with 1,136 so it’s no surprise that he’s also first for xA (10.78). To top it off, he’s racked up 23 bonus points, the same as Salah.   

Sadio Mane (Liverpool) 175 points

Double GW24, 2019-20, will never be forgotten by those managers who triple-captained Mane only to see him hobble off after 32 minutes against Wolves then miss the West Ham game through injury. The scars from getting three points from your triple captain chip take a long time to heal…

Aside from that disastrous gameweek, Mane has been an excellent FPL asset this season, with 14 goals, nine assists and 22 bonus points.  

He’s fired off 60 shots, 51 of them from inside the box. Salah has taken 38 more shots than Mane but has just two more goals. One thing Mane has over Salah is his ability in the air. Mane has recorded 17 headed goal attempts to Salah’s six. Richarlison has the most headed attempts (23) among midfielders.  

Mane is joint-top in the midfielder’s chart for big chances (23) alongside Raheem Sterling. In terms of chance creation, Mane ranks 15th among midfielders with 41. He’s fourth for penalty area touches (164) and has an xG of 11.93.   

Richarlison (Everton) 133 points

Richarlison is a name very few would have tipped to make it into the team of the season but here he is. The Brazilian has 10 goals, five assists and 13 bonus points. 

He ranks third behind Salah and De Bruyne for shots with 72, fifty-six of them from inside the box. The former Watford attacker has touched the ball in the opposition box 155 times which ranks fifth among midfielders. Since Carlo Ancelotti took over at the end of December he has four goals and two assists.

Can he keep his place in the team of the season come GW38 (whenever that may be) is the big question? He’s certainly flown under the radar to some extent this year.

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Forwards 

Jamie Vardy (Leicester City) 167 points

Vardy remains at the top of the Premier League goalscoring chart despite not scoring for 10 Gameweeks before his brace from the bench against Aston Villa on Monday night. In addition to his 19 league goals, he has chipped in with six assists and has been awarded 27 bonus points.

The 33-year-old has had more big chances (28) than any other player and has scored four of his five penalties, missing against Burnley in January. He’s outperformed his xG (14.18) but Vardy has always been like that, he doesn’t need many chances to find the back of the net as we witnessed against Villa: two shots, two goals. He will take some stopping in the race for the golden boot.   

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal) 152 points

Aubameyang has Vardy in his sights. The Arsenal man has 17 goals, three assists and tops the league for bonus points with 29. 

Despite spending a lot of time on the wing and being forced to track back, he has still managed to put the ball in the back of the net on a regular basis. His number of crosses this season (72) sums up his position on the pitch for most of the campaign. Watford’s Gerard Deulofeu (96) is the only forward to have sent in more crosses and that’s largely down to him taking corners.

No matter how ineffective Aubameyang might look when you watch an Arsenal game, he always finds a way to score, much to the frustration of his non-owners. He’s well down the rankings in terms of xG for forwards in 13th with 10.41, which makes his tally of 17 goals even more impressive. 

Raul Jimenez (Wolves) 147 points

Jimenez is the main man when it comes to forward stats this season. He’s top for shots (99), shots in the box (78), headed goal attempts (22) and xA (4.53). It’s crazy to think he’s had 40 more shots than Vardy. 

In GW1, many believed a price tag of £7.5m was too high but he’s made a mockery of it, scoring 13 goals, providing six assists and racking up 23 bonus points. 

The best thing about Jimenez is his ability to create chances as well as score them. His 42 chances created is a figure bettered only by Deulofeu (44). Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino (184) is the only forward who has had more penalty area touches than Jimenez (171) and the Mexican has scored all three penalties he’s taken and has an impressive xG of 14.10. 

So, here is the team is in all its glory. Hats off if you’ve had a strong core of that XI…

To listen to Mark’s podcast, The 59th Minute FPL Podcast, which is part of The Athletic’s podcast offering, click here. You can also follow Mark on Twitter @FPLGeneral or at patreon.com/fplgeneral

[Vesper 30,091]

Who is the most underrated attacking player in the Premier League?

https://theathletic.com/1678594/2020/03/17/underrated-attacker-premier-league-mailbag/

Discussing (or arguing) whether players are underrated, overrated or just plain adequately rated is one of the more enjoyable topics to spitball in football.

With that in mind, we asked you who you thought was the most underrated attacking player in the Premier League, so Tom Worville could add the objective to the subjective…

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By my count, there were 51 votes for attacking players in the Premier League who are perceived as underrated — thank you all for responding.

I tallied up each direct response to the question as a vote for each player and you can see the results below.

I ignored threaded replies agreeing (or disagreeing) with the player suggested and also didn’t count the “likes” per player (Son Heung-min wins comfortably if these were included).

This looks like a pretty solid list, with many names that I definitely agree are generally “underrated”, as well as a few I’m less sure about. Marcus Rashford, I’d firmly place in the rated camp, Eddie Nketiah feels like he needs more time on the field before opinions are thrown around, and I might have to spend a considerable amount longer debating the inclusion of Andy Carroll.

I’ll go through the “gold” tier in a bit more detail, then give you a line for each of the “silver” tier players with a stat to back me up. Finally, I’ll tweet out some visuals backing up the “bronze” tier choices throughout the week over on Twitter.

Gold Tier

Dominic Calvert-Lewin

Calvert-Lewin’s inclusion isn’t much of a surprise. Despite having yet to receive an England call-up, he’s been prolific this season, especially under Carlo Ancelotti. Since the Italian’s appointment, Calvert-Lewin has scored eight goals, good for 0.69 per 90 minutes played and more than any other player since late December.

His ability to consistently get into great goalscoring positions and finish may be going under the radar but it certainly shouldn’t be when you look at the numbers. Of all the players in Europe’s top five leagues with 1,800-plus minutes to their name since start of the season, Calvert-Lewin has the 10th best goalscoring rate.

This scoring streak doesn’t look to be a flash in the pan, either. His 0.7 xG per 90 minutes is third in the Premier League, behind Manchester City duo Sergio Aguero (0.89) and Gabriel Jesus (0.85), and he’s nearly played more minutes than the two of them combined.

Goalscoring isn’t everything for a striker, though, and Calvert-Lewin’s aerial ability is worthy of a mention. Smarterscout is a football analytics site owned and run by Dan Altman, previously a senior advisor to Swansea City and DC United. A free-to-use site, smarterscout breaks down elements of a player’s game into different performance, skill and style metrics. The approach to quantifying some of these measures is novel, and worth taking a look at.

Take Calvert-Lewin’s aerial ability, which the eye test tells us is pretty good. Smarterscout can help us put a figure on how good that ability is, with the model used treating each aerial duel a bit like a bet.

For example, if Lionel Messi is to go up for an aerial duel with Peter Crouch, he probably wouldn’t bet much money that he’d win it, for obvious reasons. The odds would be stacked in Crouch’s favour (say, he’s got a 90 per cent chance of winning the duel) and therefore, he’d need to bet a lot to win a small amount.

What if Messi does win, though? He’d win that large chunk that Crouch staked, and Crouch would lose out by a lot. Over the course of many bets (or aerial duels), players will start to emerge as winners (good in the air) or losers (bad in the air). Novel, right?

According to smarterscout, Calvert-Lewin rates as 82 out of 99 for aerial duels in open play, a great score and underlining his ability in the air. This score is calculated by taking into account all of those “bets” over the course of his career, comparing his numbers to other strikers, and then standardised for the difficulty of the league played in.

This league adjustment is important. If Calvert-Lewin were to play in Serie B in Italy for example, his ability would jump to 95/99 because players there are, on average, of lower quality (both overall and in the air). A rating of 82 in the Premier League, therefore, holds weight.

A standout season backed by great goalscoring figures, and a slightly different skill set to others available with his aerial ability; Calvert-Lewin represents a great option for England, whenever football gets going again.

Dwight McNeil

It really doesn’t feel like there’s been enough fanfare about Dwight McNeil’s season. He’s 20 years old, has missed just 76 minutes of football and has a not-unreasonable five assists to his name. Assists, though, can be a noisy statistic as a player may put their team-mate into a great scoring position only to see them fail to hit the target, therefore not registering an assist despite doing his own bit right.

Situations like this may result in a chance created being logged (ie, the player does get the shot away but doesn’t score) but knowing the quality of the created chance cuts through the noise and more accurately allows us to assess a player’s creativity.

If we consider the expected goals from chances created, an exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin metric where we assign the xG of the chance that a player created to the creator himself, we can get a better understanding of the quality of chances created.

By this measure, McNeil ranks fourth in the Premier League behind Kevin De Bruyne, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Riyad Mahrez. His 6.8 xG from chances created tells us that, on average, we’d expect him to have closer to seven assists based on the chances he has created, yet he only has five. A very respectable total, and shows that judging him on assists alone doesn’t give the complete picture.

Adjusting this for the number of minutes played drops McNeil down to 19th but of the players ahead of him, only Alexander-Arnold has played more.

I find this aspect of analytics and team selection an interesting one — would you rather have a player who is good for a large amount of minutes, or great in a smaller amount of minutes? A topic for another mailbag, perhaps, but let the record show that McNeil is having a great season and to use the classic cliche, “we’d be talking about him more if he played for (insert top-six team name here)”.

Richarlison

Rounding off our so-called gold tier is Richarlison. Arriving from Watford in 2018 for £35 million, which in today’s money, feels like a snip, Richarlison is lauded by many — including The Athletic Everton writer Patrick Boyland — as the complete modern striker.

It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. Richarlison has played all across the front four positions this season and is something of a dual-threat. He’s contributed 10 non-penalty goals and three assists this season but his underlying numbers paint him as equal parts a scorer and creator.

His expected goals total of 7.8 hints at a degree of luck in his goalscoring tally this season, whereas the quality of the chances he’s created (as explained above with McNeil) would on average return 6.1 goals, the inverse of his fortunes as the Brazilian currently has three assists.

Richarlison is potentially an underrated dribbler, too. According to smarterscout, his dribble rating is 92 out of 99 and historically only matched over multiple seasons by Jordan Ayew and Eden Hazard. Scoring, creating and dribbling? No wonder Barcelona are reportedly on the hunt.

Silver Tier

David McGoldrick Zero goals from 6.2 xG isn’t overly flattering but no striker in the Premier League either attempts or wins more tackles than the Sheffield United man.

Emi Buendia I’m an admirer of Buendia’s and have written about him in the past. One of the more underrated creators in the league, according to smarterscout’s ball-progression model, he gets the ball upfield at the same rate of Mohamed Salah when adjusting them both to having the same time in possession.

Harvey Barnes is fourth in terms of xG per 90 minutes played (0.35) for all left midfielders or wingers, behind Diogo Jota, Raheem Sterling and Sadio Mane. I can’t not support a fellow ginger, especially with numbers that good.

Raul Jimenez He’s starting to become one of my favourite players to watch in the Premier League. I definitely didn’t understand the move to begin with based on his goalscoring record at Atletico Madrid and then Benfica, which serves as a great reminder that past performances don’t always reflect future performances. Of all strikers, only Teemu Pukki has played more minutes this season, and 10 goals and six assists shows Jimenez’s ability to contribute plenty to Wolves’ attack.

[Special Juan 28,098]

Liverpool will NOT be crowned champions if PL league is cancelled over Covid-19 says UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin

 

Can you fucking imagine this..

[Vesper 30,091]

34 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

Liverpool will NOT be crowned champions if PL league is cancelled over Covid-19 says UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin

 

Can you fucking imagine this..

hell YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DO IT

[Vesper 30,091]

riot riot in Merseyside incoming

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Laylabelle 9,534]

The Football Association has also agreed that the current season can be "extended indefinitely".

[Special Juan 28,098]

Ex Cardiff player Peter Whittingham has died after a fall in a pub.

[Fernando 6,585]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

 

Yeah that is expected. 

But I'm mostly curious about the contract situation. 

What FIFA and FA will do....

[BlueLyon 9,359]

And I thought international breaks are bad...

This no football is killing me 😂