PL 24/25 - Player Radars #1
10 players I am looking forward to watching.
I recommended clicking view in app/browser at the top to read the full post as some email providers will cut it short.
Short housekeeping on recent blog additions:
I released my Fast Fantasy Model - my solution to playing fantasy as a person with very little time. It is also a ‘beginner guide’ to using models for fantasy, so I made it public this season along with a guide.
Premier League predictions page: added 6GW predicted goal involvement for 100 players. Finalised data will come within the next 10 days before the season starts.
Now here are some players I am looking forward to watching!
Arsenal
I expect Saka to take another step forward in his production this year. It's a relatively hard first 6 for Arsenal but he still comes up 3rd in my predicted goal involvement tables.
If you want to know how good Saka is, then observe how every team defends against him, from a friend of the blog
:
Aston Villa
I first started to take Maatsen seriously when he was putting up impressive numbers in the Championship for Burnley in 22/23. Whilst he does the usual progressive carry and pass into the box job well, what I find different about Maatsen is that he is a ‘high-volume’ fullback in an unusual way: 90th percentile for live-ball touches and 93rd percentile for touches in the middle 3rd of the pitch. His Dortmund heatmap shows this quite well:
Bournemouth
I am throwing Solanke in here as I was quite disappointed to see a lot of the negative takes on him after he was linked to Tottenham. In my opinion, they ignore his most valuable trait: he plays a *lot* of football. People often leave this out when discussing good/great strikers. A ‘good’ striker who is on the pitch the whole season is then a ‘great’ striker (see also Ollie Watkins). The above radar is based on 3325 minutes played. He has played 13,614 minutes over the past 4 seasons.
Brentford
In 22/23, Mbeumo played ~3000 minutes, appearing in all 38 Premier League games. At that time, he was still relatively raw, but the potential was there. I think Mbeumo made a significant leap during Toney’s long-term absence. With Toney gone, Brentford needed someone to step up and fill the gap in open-play production. Mbeumo did this by upping his non-penalty xG per 90 minutes to a career-high of 0.34 and increasing his dribble/carry and pass on-ball value metrics. My numbers think this is sustainable and we are looking at 15+ goal involvements this season.
Brighton
I am not sure there are many better young RW talents than Yankuba Minteh. Minteh’s production in front of goal is obvious, ranking in the 97th percentile for goals per 90 minutes and the 99th percentile for expected goals. This stems from his ability to create for himself, with 99th percentile for progressive carries and 98th for take-ons.
His defensive action volume has also caught my eye. An impressive ranking in the 99th percentile for tackles won, especially in the attacking third. High work rate and willingness to press.
I noticed his pass completion rate was awful (5th percentile), despite his extremely high creation metrics. Probably a side-effect of his carrying play style: very few passes but they are usually high-value passes/crosses into the penalty area.
Chelsea
I still don’t think we have seen anywhere close to the best of Enzo Fernandez yet. I feel like Maresca’s brand of patient possession-based build-up will benefit Enzo. I think pairing him with the likes of Caicedo and Lavia will help him be a bit more free. Expecting ~10 goal involvements this season with an uptick in assists.
Crystal Palace
Some of his best football was played under Glasner at Eintracht Frankfurt and I am expecting him to adapt to the Premier League very well. He has a history of playing multiple positions but last season at Lazio over 80% of his minutes were at CM. He was utilised a lot further forward when he was previously with Glasner. I would expect him to be used a lot but I have a slight worry about his overall minutes. His past five seasons have all looked something like this: 30 appearances but only ~2000 minutes roughly 22 starts.
Everton
Okay - hear me out. I get it - the above radar showing 5 goals from ~11 npxG is indeed a terrible look. Long-time readers may be aware that DCL was one of my first love affairs in football analytics. I remember watching him in 18/19 and 19/20, enamoured by the positions he was finding himself in. He has not changed. He is, at his core, a npxG machine. That level of finishing underperformance is not repeatable. I am looking forward to him being injury-free and back at his best.
Fulham
Rodrigo Muniz might be the truth you know. His underlying numbers are quite crazy: 4.1 shots p90 puts him in the 94th percentile. This is only based on 1600 minutes played and we don’t have much to go on before that - this was the most he has ever played in a season (by a lot). The sample size does worry me and I think this is hard to sustain at a team like Fulham. Nevertheless, something tells me he might just do it. Scores more than 10 goals this season if he stays injury-free.
Ipswich
The radar says everything you need to know about Davis’ ludicrous creative production. What interests me even more is set pieces. They scored the second most set piece goals last year in the Championship (19). McKenna has been focusing on set-pieces for quite a few years now and they have added a Set-Play and First-Team Coach. See this pre-season quote from McKenna:
“They’re going to be massive for us, no doubt about it,” he said. “Our set-play record’s been excellent in the last couple of years from an attacking sense especially, but defensively strong as well.
“We’re going to have to have it as a source of goals, for sure. We’re going to get fewer set pieces, we’re going to get fewer corners, fewer set pieces in the final third, so we have to optimise them as well as we possibly can against teams who are going to be even better organised.
“It’s a big challenge and if we can still contribute goals from set plays in different ways, it will be big for us, so nice to get one today.”
Thanks for reading - remember that as a member you can browse through this site unrestricted. Lots more data to come over the next 10 days before the season starts!