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

Billy Carpenter

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(he still created a great chance from here)

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.