GW 6 Deep Dive - On Haaland, Salah, Arsenal, and other small insights

A good decision is backed by a good analytical tool/insight in the background:

Last week when we recommended to buy Burnley's Anthony (10 pts), it wasn't a random punt, but rather the analytical tool/insight was about opportunity cost: in a week where few teams/players were hot favourites, the risk of going for a cheap differential was lower than usual (and the reward relatively high!)

This week, the tool we'll focus on is analytical tightness - in particular, finding the right question to ask, and the decisive datapoints that help you land on a good call:

On whether to "triple captain" Haaland

• Haaland is the top FPL player right now (46 points). But is Burnley truly the worst defending team to justify the wildcard chip?
• The FPL community is focusing on Burnley conceding a large number of shot attempts, but we think they are overlooking how Burnley has the best goal difference among the bottom six teams:

• We think what explains this "paradox" is that Burnley defends well (you can can see their organised form during the match), but deeply (hence conceding a high number of attempts) while being generally able to pull off successful blocks/saves. They also attempt fast, high-risk/high-reward counter-attacks that tend to fail and give the ball over, making the opponent look like a "shot machine".
• So we think a better match for TC is when Manchester City hosts a defensively weaker West Ham on 20 Dec (gameweek 17), where there are no midweek European matches before/after. Or we might just pull the trigger earlier when Semenyo hosts West Ham on 22 Nov.
• But of course, things might change along the way e.g. Haaland/Semenyo getting dropped or losing their form; or if West Ham manaer Graham Potter gets the sack and the team improves, etc. So we might argue that "a bird in the hand" (an easy match now) is worth two in the bush (thinking the same conditions apply later for better harvesting).
• Our final judgement call is that the risk premium of waiting is worth it. TC-ing Haaland against Burnley is certainly not a dumb move! We just think we can do slightly better, so we will captain Haaland but not TC him.
• Of course, the frustrating thing about TC is that we can hardly know whether we made a good decision or not - it is about betting on a single player for a single game.
  • And it is measured not just by the single outcome (where you played TC) but also against every other gameweek (where you could have played TC instead).
  • The best decision can be made that leads to a blank; and even if you are right in not TC-ing Haaland, you will get a red arrow compared to the TCers if he scores a "modest" 9 pts (and they get 9 pts more than you).
• Phew. Either way, we wish you (and us) the best!

On profiting off Arsenal defence

• We didn't realise until recently that there was an opportunity on this front, since everyone already knows Arsenal's defence is good.
• But looking at Twitter:
  • Around half of the wildcard squads are only buying one Arsenal defender rather than having two defenders, despite Arsenal defence stats being a far cry above the other teams (hardly conceding a single major chance for an entire match)
• More crucially, most people are focusing on the centrebacks Gabriel/Saliba as they are worried about the rotation risks of fullbacks Calafiori/Timber, despite the latter being cheaper and scoring notably getting more points so far:

• Key question here: Is the rotation risk really worth dropping Calafiori/Timber for Gabriel/Saliba? We don't think so for two reasons.
  • As far as we can tell, Calafiori/Timber are the first-team choices (including even if Ben White is fit again) so any rotation will be limited (let's say one rest in every five matches).
  • Key datapoints:
    • If things do change drastically later, the "four point" cost of transferring Calafiori/Timber out if need be seems reasonable in exchange for the prospective reward: Calafiori/Timber (35 pts each) are now almost double the points of Saliba (17 pts) right now and nearly 1.5X the points of Gabriel (25 pts).
    • Calafiori/Timber are only 3 points off the top defence list after facing Liverpool and Manchester City, amidst a tough fixture list that made me shun Arsenal players in anticipation of the coming easy run. None of the higher-positioned players have faced both teams (and they also have to contend with Arsenal this season, unlike Calafiori/Timbre), so C/T are effectively the best-in-class.

• The quality of this recommendation is easy to measure, we'll see how Calafiori and Timber perform for the "golden fixture run" after Newcastle (especially how they match up against their centreback teammates).

On Salah

• We are pleasantly surprised that many people are keeping the faith with Salah as this gives us a competitive advantage. Maybe this is due to our earlier wish coming true ("Why we don't have Salah and we hope he hauls") where he still seemed to be doing ok due to Liverpool earning last-gasp penalty against Burnley (his highest "haul" of 9 pts compared to the 5,3,5,8 so far).
• The correct question isn't "is Salah good" but "is he overpriced"? We simply don't see the need to take him right now and this datapoint kind of says it all:

• We even considered how we might be wrong -
  • We think Isak and Salah seem to have a good understanding, so they could symbiotically start creating hauls. But this needs to be confirmed AND Isak to be a clear starter.
  • Salah can also be worth it if there are no good alternatives anyway, which we think is why many are sticking to him - Saka and Palmer are not firing yet, and the rest of the top midfielders do seem like unfamiliar names. E.g. if other names are cheap/inconsistent, why save up just to have money in the bank? But we are confident that although there are no obvious alternatives, a squad can collectively do better from the money not spent on Salah.
• We won't rule out Salah getting double-digit returns in any given match of course. We just think it needs to happen consistently first and are happy to wait and pay the potential premium of not having the 14.5 Salah until that happens.

Smaller insights/calls

• We favour Reijnders more than Foden as we think they are finely balanced even when we don't take into account Foden's higher price. For all that Foden is grabbing headlines right now, Reijnders has his attacking moments and we like his 9 points against Arsenal. The fact that Foden is 2.3m more expensive tips the balance. We do think that there is a chance Foden does particularly well against smaller teams; we just don't see this in the head-to-head stats yet and will not act on this.
• On the whole between Mbeumo/Fernandes, we still slightly favour Mbeumo more who has stronger attacking stats, is positionally more forward, and is cheaper.
• We are looking at Pope/Vicario being our season-long keeper (to replace our Sanchez). Newcastle/Spurs are "good teams that are particularly hard to break down" (compared to Pickford where Everton will find it harder to get clean sheets throughout the season). This avoids us committing to three Arsenal players (i.e. buying Raya in addition to two Arsenal defence when Arsenal's good run starts from GW7.) We are prepared to pay 4 points for this if need be since the payoff will be season-long.

May the FPL gods smile on you :)

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