I thought I’d just do a fantasy premier league GW16 forwards article for direct replacements for the injured Arnautovic as it seemed to be a pressing topic. There’s a table of stats on 8 similarly priced options plus some commentary and their upcoming fixtures. There’s also a poll to see what FFGeek readers are doing.
fantasy premier league GW16 forwards – some direct replacements for Arnautovic
Arnautovic injury
West Ham striker Arnautovic suffered an injury in the 39th minute of GW15’s West Ham v Cardiff and went off. Here’s what Pellegrini has said
“Arnautovic has a muscle injury and he will probably be out for around a month.”
The stats
Definitions
SP/Pen: indicates whether the player has some set piece representation or penalty responsibility
Pts per 90: the FPL points earned per 90 minutes played in 18/19
Consistency: the % of starts where the player has scored a goal or assist. Sub appearances are ignored.
Av Mins: average minutes of the last 4 matches. Generally I count sub appearances or rotation but not injury absences although there is some discretion there.
xG90/xA 90 – their expected goals and expected assists per 90 minutes played. An xG90 of 0.3 would imply a 30% chance of scoring every 90 minutes based on an average premier league player. I’ve taken them from the excellent free site understat.com
Sh90 and KP90 and – shots per 90 and key passes per 90 minutes played. I’ve taken this from the excellent free site whoscored.com
ATGS GW16 – 1 bookies anytime goalscoring odds. ATGS assumes they start and doesn’t include assist potential.
Player values are as of Thursday 6 December.
The schedule
The players are not in a particular order. I have not ranked them but provided information for you to make a choice. I’ve only looked at players in a direct price comparison.
Wilson
Unquestionably the star performer of the 8 players with good all round stats and returns. His ability to create chances for others leading to assists has been a major additional string to his bow with only Aguero and Arnautovic having a better xA90 of strikers playing more than 500 minutes.
8 goals and 8 assists in 15 starts is a pretty remarkable record as is the fact that he’s the 2nd highest FPL point scoring forward behind Aubameyang but ahead of Kane and Aguero. If you were looking for negatives you’d probably say that he’s performing above historic levels (I’ve been saying that for a while though) and has been aided by a couple of Josh King penalty absences.
However probably the biggest negative you would throw at him are the fixtures, although he has already scored against Man Utd and Man City this season of the 4 top 6 teams he’s played.
Liverpool (H)
Wolves (A)
Brighton (H)
Spurs (A)
Man Utd (A)
Watford (H)
Mitrovic
My initial reaction to Ranieri’s appointment was that Mitrovic couldn’t be any further removed from Jamie Vardy, Ranieri’s style couldn’t be any different than Jokanovic’s and that he would struggle in a counter attacking system.
However in the 3 games he’s played he’s scored twice and got 1 assist breaking a run of 6 games with 1 assist. If you ignore the Chelsea game the other 2 games were backed up by decent underlying stats especially shot volumes.
The fixtures aren’t too bad either.
Man Utd (A)
West Ham (H)
Newcastle (A)
Wolves (H)
Huddersfield (H)
Arsenal (A)
Jimenez
Another player who’s benefited from his ability to create chances for his team mates with 4 goals and 6 assists in his 15 starts. There’s nothing wrong with his PP90 for the price and 8 bonus points at this stage is not to be sniffed at either.
If you were looking for negatives you would say that he has shown with Wolves and Athletico Madrid previously that he has lagged behind his xG which isn’t that great as a starting point. You would also look at a couple of tricky fixtures and question how strong an attacking side Wolves are with 15 goals. Only 1 more than Cardiff and Burnley.
Newcastle (A)
Bournemouth (H)
Liverpool (H)
Fulham (A)
Spurs (A)
Crystal Palace (H)
King
I’ve put King in but I’m not sure why you would go with him over Wilson except for his penalty responsibilities and his slightly cheaper price
Liverpool (H)
Wolves (A)
Brighton (H)
Spurs (A)
Man Utd (A)
Watford (H)
Rondon
3 goals since he came back into the side starting the last 5.
Everything looks pretty good in terms of that recent form, PP90, xG and shot volumes. It’s just all so far removed from his history with WBA and are Newcastle really that different a side? It’s also only based on 650 minutes which isn’t exactly a huge data set. A couple of 70 minute odd substitutions in those 5 games isn’t helpful either.
Wolves (H)
Huddersfield (A)
Fulham (H)
Liverpool (A)
Watford (A)
Man Utd (H)
Zaha
Probably the only positive you could attribute to Zaha is that you’re pretty much guaranteed 90 minutes.
Otherwise you’ve got a guy with a pretty poor PP90 who struggles for bonus and has terrible underlying stats. He maybe classified as a forward but he’s a LW pure and simple.
West Ham (A)
Leicester (H)
Man City (A)
Cardiff (H)
Chelsea (H)
Wolves (A)
Chicharito
The problem with Chicharito is a bit of a question mark over gametime with the rather surprising emergence of forgotten man Lucas.
Pellegrini has predominantly played 4-2-3-1 with West Ham but switched to 4-4-2 in the last 2 games which saw 3 goals scored in each game and Chicharito start both games. Will that continue without Arnautovic or was the system there due to Arnautovic?
If Chicharito plays you’ve got a guy who knows how to put the ball in the net, who’s producing very good underlying stats this season.
It’s also impossible to think the fixtures could be much better
Crystal Palace (H)
Fulham (A)
Watford (H)
Southampton (A)
Burnley (A)
Brighton (H)
Deeney
Penalties is probably the only positive here with ordinary stats all over the place.
Everton (A)
Cardiff (H)
West Ham (A)
Chelsea (H)
Newcastle (H)
Bournemouth (A)
The Poll
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