Hello fix community! My name is Luke, also known as FPLIrons on Twitter, and I have recently joined the fix team. I will be getting involved in the Social Media side of things and writing blogs throughout the season. My blog series is ‘FPL fact or fixtion’ (see what I did there). Each week I will be exploring the biggest bandwagons and opinions making their way across social media, and using stats found on fix to analyse them. Hopefully, we will be able to dispel the rumour going around that David Moyes isn’t the greatest manager to ever grace planet Earth. So, let’s get started!
Today I am going to analyse if these 5 topics are fact or fixtion:
In order to analyse this topic, I have taken data for the top scoring player at the highest scoring promoted club, and compared their Championship season to their Premier League season. For example, in 2009/10 Andy Carroll was the top scorer for Newcastle with 17 goals, he followed this up with 13 goals the subsequent season for Newcastle and Liverpool, a drop-off of 23.5%.
Based on the table above, we can see that Patrick Bamford’s phenomenal season was a major outlier. Despite playing in a harder division, getting less games and minutes, he managed to find the net 17 times compared to 16 the previous season. This is the only time one of the attackers has improved their goal scoring record following promotion.
We saw some major drop offs from the likes of David Nugent, Callum Wilson and Dwight Gayle, which can be easily explained. Callum Wilson suffered a major injury setback that saw him start only 9 games, while Nugent and Gayle became bit part players due to new signings, or a change of tactics.
This topic is being discussed currently, as Ivan Toney was top scorer for Brentford last season with 31 goals and is currently owned by over 30% of FPL managers. The remaining 70% likely believe that he can’t keep up his scoring rate. It is unlikely that we will see another Bamford-esque season, where Toney manages to score 31+ goals. However, if he has a drop-off that matches the 11 season average (54.2%), he will score 14 goals next season, which seems like a solid enough return for £6.5m compared to the rest of the £5-7m options.
Overall, I think it would be fair to claim that the top scoring attackers underperform the following season. However, it doesn’t mean that we should avoid altogether. Lambert, Jota, Pukki and Bamford were all great value in their respective seasons, Toney and Pukki could provide great returns this season.
Leeds started the 2020/21 season with a 4-3 loss at Anfield and a 4-3 win over Fulham, this was followed a month later with back to back 4-1 defeats to Crystal Palace and Leicester. Despite entertaining the masses, there was serious worries about Leeds defence and whether they could stay in the division defending so poorly. Leeds seemed to improve defensively as the season went on, especially after the return of Diego Llorente in 2021. But… do the stats back this one up?
When analysing the Expected Goals Against per 90 (xGA90) for Leeds at Elland Road in both 2020 and 2021, we can see that there was a 25.78% improvement later on in the season, 1.13 xGA90 in 2021 compared to the 1.52 in 2020. A very similar % was found away from home, where an improvement of 24.62% occurred. Leeds were still porous, conceding an xG of 1.78 per game, but that is a vast improvement on what we had seen previously.
I dived deeper into why this could have occurred using fix’s Custom Stats Builder. I found that between GW 1-19 Leeds made 13 defensive errors leading to an opposition shot, compared to only 5 between GW20-38. The defensive improvements clearly came due to a more savvy game plan, and tactical switch up with slightly less ‘heavy metal’ football. This one is definitely a fact! Leeds improved dramatically as the season went on.
GW1-19
GW20-38
I have analysed the last 32 teams that qualified for the Europa league and took part in the Premier League the following season (Wigan and Birmingham removed to due relegation in cup winning seasons).
Overall, 18 teams had a worse season while taking part in the Europa league, 11 teams improved and 3 stayed the same. In total, the difference equated to a 32 position drop, meaning that teams dropped on average exactly 1 position.
The numbers seem to suggest that there is very little to discuss on this topic. However, there are some very interesting teams within the list, including West Ham 15/16, Newcastle 11/12, Burnley 17/18 and Everton 13/14. These clubs all had significant decreases in their Premier League position following qualification to the Europa League. The obvious thing that jumps out at you when looking at these four squads, is the lack of depth. The following season they had to deal with Sunday – Thursday - Sunday fixtures, as well as the lack of pre-season and rest due to Europa games in June/July.
These clubs intrigue me, as West Ham will be taking part in the Europa League group stage with a thread bare squad. West Ham don’t currently have a back-up striker to injury prone Michail Antonio, there is little depth in central midfield or at centre-half either. The likes of Cresswell and Coufal who were fantastic value last season, may now be complete duds at £5m and £5.5m respectively, if West Ham are to keep less clean sheets.
Overall, the data suggests that there is little to prove that teams massively struggle based on additional European games, however on a case by case basis, we could see a big drop off from West Ham this season.
There is always talk about Paul Pogba’s best role for United, and how Ole Gunnar Solskjaer should utilise him. This became even more intriguing when Bruno Fernandes joined the Red Devils in 2020, as the Frenchman’s best games at Old Trafford arguably came in a more advanced role within midfield. Last season, where Fernandes and Pogba played together, United would often play a 433 with McTominay or Fred sitting behind the duo. This allowed Pogba to be more creative, but in turn it appeared that Bruno was less of an attacking threat.
Using fix PlayerHeatmaps tool I was able to compare Bruno Fernandes with Paul Pogba (Left), to without Paul Pogba (Right). The per 90 statistics are astounding. Bruno scored nearly three times more goals without Pogba, his expected goals were halved too.
Creatively, little changed for Fernandes with regards to assists and expected assists. This is likely due to the fact that Fernandes was able to find the half spaces out wide, and get more crosses into the box, in what was effectively a ‘Mezzala’ role in the Solskjaer 433.
It seems quite obvious that Bruno will perform to a lesser standard in a deeper role. I would argue that it is the system that affects Fernandes’ output, rather than Paul Pogba. If both players played in a 4231, where Pogba lined up alongside McTominay with Bruno as the number 10, we would likely see very similar numbers to those on the right hand side of the table above. I’m going to sit on the fence with this one and claim that I am undecided currently (sorry).
I have analysed Pep Guardiola’s biggest summer signings during his 12 seasons in management, looking into how many league appearances the signings made in their first season. Overall, Pep’s biggest signings play 81% of games, defensive players such as Dias, Rodri, Alves and Walker played basically all games in all competitions across the season, the attacking players are far more of a rotation risk.
Pep’s biggest signing currently is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was signed for Barcelona for around £100m when including fees and players exchanged. He only played 29 games under Pep and was sold soon after. This clearly shows that Pep has the character to rotate big name players, and even drop or sell them.
I think it could be argued that when Harry Kane is fit, he will play the majority of games and minutes for Manchester City should they sign him, given that he would have very little competition. However, Jack Grealish would be competing with Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Ferran Torres, Riyad Mahrez and Raheem Sterling. I’m not sure a £100m price tag would guarantee any player in the world a start in that midfield.
The positive that we do have with Jack Grealish, is the £8m price tag in FPL. If he were to play in 75-80% of minutes in an attacking position, you’d like to think that he would be fantastic value and a very nice route into the City attack, without having to spend £12-12.5m on Kevin De Bruyne or Harry Kane.
Overall, I would say that it is correct to assume that Kane and Grealish will play the majority of minutes under Pep should they sign for Manchester City this summer.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed my first blog for fix, and maybe I’ve even changed your mind about some FPL myths. Come back each week as I tackle more ‘facts or fixtions’.
Luke ‘FPLIrons’ Boarer
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