Premier League (FPL) Team of the Weak - GW Nine

GAZZANIGA (4.4 TOT) – Conceding after just 6 minutes was not the best way to show your boss you could step in for the next 3 months. Certainly not given said boss has already brought back the former number 2 to the club as a precaution. Spurs have kept one clean sheet all season. Which, considering they have played 5 matches at home against bottom of the table sides, is contemptible.

DIOP (4.5 WHU) – The West Ham centre back had the sort of game for which synonyms of excrement were invented for. Making the Everton front line look like Manchester City should come with a prison sentence. Diop managed a pitiful 62% pass completion rate against Everton, often just giving them the ball back for a laugh. Those number are bad for a forward, but for a centre back they are criminal. He didn’t do anything positive of note the entire match and allowed the Toffees to fire off 20 shots. He was, in footballing terms, the equivalent of the g in lasagne. Utterly pointless.

MONTOYA (4.5 BHA) – Playing opposite Matt Targett, Martin Montoya was outclassed from start to finish. The Spanish “footballer” has thus far this season been a full back who can’t really defend, or attack. He creates a chance every 120 minutes going forward, and makes around 2 tackles a match in defence. He has only won 6 headers in 8 matches. He has a silly face.

I’m not sure I need to go on.

VALERY (4.8 SOU) – A dreadful performance coupled with stats that would make a Norwich City defender blush. Valery completed a barely credible 10 passes against Wolves, at a completion rate of just 66%. To put that into perspective, his opposite number Bertrand, managed 38 and the player who he was up against, Jonny, managed 32. He touched the ball just 4 times in the final third the entire game despite playing as a wing back. He lost it two of those times. Maybe he was pressed back though? He was playing away after all. Maybe? I don’t know. I only saw the highlights… where he looked shit… and his stats… which show 1 tackle all match. He had a BPS of 6 whilst only conceding one goal. What on earth was he doing on the pitch?

RICE (4.9 WHU) – Declan Rice was bad for his country and even worse for his club. For a young player with bags of talent, one hopes this is a mere wake up call rather than the sign of anything more serious. After all, playing for a team as rabidly inconsistent as West Ham is never easy. I mean… you really do have no idea what you’re going to get at any point with them do you? One minute they play lovely passing football and attack with pace and guile. And the next… well… this. Rocking up against the least in form team in the league and surrendering faster than you can say Boris Johnson.

GUNDOGAN (5.2 MCI) – Gundo is now wanted by law enforcement agencies across 6 continents for crimes against fantasy football, and the possibility that he has some sort of leverage over Pep Guardiola’s family. In the 6 games he has started this season City have won just 3 of them and have amassed an aggregate score of 12-9. In the 3 games he hasn’t, City have won all of them to the tune of a combined 17-0. The best City fans can come up when I question his continued involvement is “he recycles the ball well” or the even more vague “Pep likes him.” He has won 2 headers and 7 tackles all season. He can’t defend, he can’t shoot (22% accuracy from 9 shots) and he can’t dribble (1 successful take on in 8 matches). He can pass the ball 6 yards. But then so can I, and I don’t get to play for Manchester fucking City.

Justice for Phil Foden.

HENDERSON (5.4 LIV) – Liverpool were desperate against United. A collective vacuum where a dominant performance should have stood. It’s hard to single out one player, so I’ve plumped for the captain, who was awful. Henderson was out fought in the first half and out passed in the second. Shunted out to an inside right position, Klopp at least managed to stem the United counter in the second half… at the total expense of any attacking threat down that flank for his team. Henderson failed with every dribble, take on and cross. Defensively he posted worst stats than Fred (that’s right… Fred) and a wildly inferior pass competition rate.

It was no surprise that when he left the pitch Pool finally found more space and eventually equalised. Pool barely deserved that, but if you can come to a place like Old Trafford, not play well and still walk away with a point… you might just bottle the league again come May.

KANE (10.9 TOT) – Kane has now scored 3 goals in 8 matches, just 1 of which was from open play. He has had just 16 shots since that opening game week at a rate of 2 per match. For a premium forward playing for Tottenham Hotspur that is desperate stuff. Over 20 players have fired off more shots than him in that time, including the likes of Rashford, Richarlison, Barnes and the now almost mythical stats breaker that is Deulofeu. But beyond that, Kane just isn’t playing well and isn’t leading the line like a top striker should. Only Lucas Moura seems currently capable of playing a high press in the style that Poch wants… so it’s baffling that he is being used so sparingly. Spurs may be 7^th, but that remains closer to relegation that the top four such is the squashed nature of the table. 

More worrying for their fans, is that they are currently showing no signs of being able to get themselves out of this rut. It’s unclear if Kane needs a new challenge, or if injuries to his ankle have caught up with him for good. Time will tell on both counts.

ABRAHAM (7.7 CHE) – In his last two home matches (BHA, NEW) Tammy Abraham has had a chance every 19 minutes and a preposterous 5 big chances. To put that into perspective, Kane & Rashford have had 4 big chances all season. Poor Josh King has only had 2. So, is he just being unlucky? Or is his finishing regressing to the level many suggested? Neither are clear at this stage, but Abraham could do with adding more to his game than just shots if he is going to continue to be so profligate. He has the creative nous of someone who calls their son Jack on the assumption nobody else has ever done it before. That’s fine when the chances are going in, but in the last 4 matches Abraham has set up a team mate just 3 times. That is beaten by the likes of Joelinton, Haller, King, Benteke… 

…hold on… Benteke? Really? Wtf. Step up Tammy.

Deulofeu by the way has created 10 chances in 4 matches. He only started in 2 of the them. How the fuck does this guy not have any FPL points yet?

PUKKI (7.0 NOR) – If you don’t know the party is over. It’s because you’re the only person still at it.

VAR (0.0 SOU) – I know this has been said a lot, but there is no bigger disappointment for me this season than the way that VAR has been implemented. I was a big supporter and have cried for technology in football for years. But not like this… never like this.

Incredibly, we are yet to have a penalty decision be overturned. You can cry all you want about a high bar, or not wanting to undermine the referee’s decision. But it has now got to the stage where there is literally no point in using it for such incidents. Only 19 penalties have been awarded so far, which would put us on for a total of 76 come the end of the season. There were 103 last year. And the last time there were less than 75 it was 2005.

There were at least three stone wall penalties not given this weekend, the last of which saw Kevin De Bruyne physically pushed to the floor with both hands.

This isn’t respecting the referees. It’s simply highlighting how shit they were all along.

If only… technology could… you know… help them.

Oh forget it.

HM

Premier League (FPL) Team of the Weak - GW Eight

THE DEFENCE – NORWICH CITY

Yes okay, they have injuries, including both of their first-choice keepers. But despite that, Norwich played a home game against Aston Villa and defended, collectively, worse than any team I think I’ve witnessed in the top flight.

5-1 didn’t flatter Villa, it flattered Norwich. It’s no exaggeration to say that if they had played like this against a full flow Liverpool the score could and would have been 12-0. They have now conceded 21 goals in just 8 matches – if they carry on at this rate they will break 100 by the end of the season.

Put simply that is not good enough. Norwich attack with reckless abandon leaving wide open holes for teams to exploit both ahead of their full backs and through the middle. Mortitz Leitner is a sham of a sitting midfielder. He has won just 50% of his tackles all season and 40% of his aerial duels. He has made errors leading to chances, errors leading to crosses. On Saturday he was so much of a passenger he may as well have set up a deckchair in the middle and led on it.

Behind him the Norwich full backs, no matter who they pick, are absolute rubbish. Max Aarons is a young player who will get better, but his performance here was genuinely haunting. Just remembering how bad he was brings me out in a cold sweat. He failed with every dribble, with every header, with every tackle, with every block, with every clearance. It was one of the worst 90 minutes of all time.

At this rate, to avoid relegation Norwich either have to dramatically improve how they set up and defend as a team; make all of their defensive players individually better… or somehow score around 90 goals.

They look fucked.

THE MIDFIELD – SOUTHAMPTON

Carved open like a Sunday roast, it’s easy to pick holes in the Saints ever changing defence, but it’s in midfield where they continue to strike a nothing blend between protection and creation. There they have been largely unchanged this season, with Hojbjerg, Romeu and Ward-Prowse featuring in every game. 

Romeu is an adept shield, all jokes of getting a booking a match aside (he has only two this season) – but it’s not entirely clear to me what the other two actually do. Hojbjerg won just a single tackle/duel on Sunday and his base rate for the season is barely 50%. He runs around a lot, but isn’t particularly good at anything of note. Ward-Prowse meanwhile seems to play in some sort of tucked in not a winger, not a midfielder role and is on the pitch just to take corners (which he does well).

Saints do tend to limit teams’ attacks through the middle as a result of their formation, but where they are hopelessly exposed is opposition wingers cutting in off the flanks. Chelsea did this expertly at the weekend, it led directly to two of their goals and created several more chances. They also seem unable to defend a long ball over the top. Which is a worry for a Sunday league team let alone a Premier League one. They have lost 172 aerial duels this season, and the most of all teams defensively. Burnley and Everton only sit below them because of the inability of their forwards to ever convert crosses. They have also conceded 7 big errors leading to chances or goals – the worst of any club.

Saints still feel like they have too much about them to go down – especially if Danny Ings and Nathan Redmond stay fit – but one wonders if the Hutch might be better looking at his midfield set up rather than picking 4 or 5 defenders with a random generator each week.

THE ATTACK – MANCHESTER UNITED

Since they beat Chelsea on the opening day Manchester United have played:

Wolves, Palace, Southampton, Arsenal, Rochdale, West Ham, FC Astana, Leicester, AZ Alkmaar & Newcastle.

10 games… and they have scored 7 goals. That would be bad enough with a difficult run – but against the teams named above that is little short of criminal. Rochdale alone have conceded 6 in their last two games since. In League One.

The problems at Utd run deep… deeper than an out of his depth manager and a team that is made of paper mâché. How on earth was this squad allowed to start the season without buying replacements for Lukaku and Herrera?

Too many of the current players are simply not good enough. Some – are not good enough for the league let alone a team supposedly challenging for the top four. Andreas Pereira has a genuine claim to be the worst person to ever wear the shirt on a regular basis. He has started 6 games so far, contributing a singular assist and creating a chance every 100 minutes. He doesn’t do anything. 

Behind him lie Jesse Lingard, a player who last scored on his 18^th birthday, which incidentally was almost a fucking decade ago. Juan Mata, a man who does great work for charity and probably should retire to do more great work for charity… oh wait we’ve just given him a three-year fucking contract. Who else is there? Greenwood and Chong? The next big things? More like puppies rehearsing for an Andrex advert. Martial is incapable of playing for 4 games in a row ever. What is even wrong with him? What is he injured with? Embarrassment?

Marcus Rashford remains the most consistent attacker at the club… and he has a conversion rate of 14%. I swear if he takes another free kick I will not be held responsible for my actions. No… he is gash. Devoid of confidence and in need of a break. Only Daniel James can be considered a modicum of success so far this season… and he has the end product of a post curry shit.

Utd are the team that just keeps giving to non-supporters right now. They are an embarrassment of a club, held hostage by Woodward & the board with little or no interest in identifying a proper identity on the pitch. Only Watford have scored less goals in the last 7 game weeks.

 

Only. Watford.

It’s like watching a team trying to win a war armed with nothing but fucking pea shooters.

My god I’m so angry I’ve not even mentioned how shit Spurs & Everton are.

What a season.

HM