Week Two brought some fascinating performances from the Big Six. Arsenal looked a bit less inevitable, Xabi Alonso brought one of the weirdest approaches to the game we’ve seen from a big team in a while, Liverpool’s attack got lost in the swamps of Glasnerland and was the demise of Man City, title contenders, written too soon? In the midst of all that Manchester United piled up video game numbers in the second half of their match.

In the hinterlands of the Premier League Brentford and Brighton kept on impressing while the second year leap from Leeds looks far away. Onwards, to our weekly review.

The Secret Sauce Landscape

Secret Sauce is a rough jumble of different metrics (deep touches, transition, etc) that I have found roughly predict performance a bit better than just xG, full explanation is at the bottom.

All are percentiles from 0 to 100, size of logo is overall score. Good defense is close to 0, at the top.

At the end of the article you can see the changes in Secret Sauce rating from preseason to now.

The offense and defense ratings are not opponent adjusted (probably should be) but the overall (size of logo) is opponent adjusted. So Arsenal away at Villa despite doing nothing offensively is rated a solid overall performance. These scores are just for this week, season ratings at bottom.

Play Forward Into Space: Alonso’s Bizarre and Simple Attacking Approach

Glossary

What in the world is going on here? Xabi Alonso at Leverkusen had his team over 60% possession, leading the league. At Chelsea through two matches they have had 32%!! of the ball ahead of only the mighty Tigers of Hull and behind Aston Villa who have played 30% of the time down a man. It’s clearly how he wants to play, but why and will this continue?

It feels like this is a super-attacking strategy to me, maybe that is counter intuitive in a way but I feel like right now Chelsea are set up first, second and third just to get Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers and maybe a wide player or two running free into space. I mean of course that’s great on it’s own, Palmer and Pedro are absolutely rampant so far. The other 6 players were just kind of hanging out deep with the ball.

Look at where Chelsea’s wide player in attack Neto was playing the ball vs Ferdi Kadioglu

Brighton were woeful trying to stop Chelsea: Verbruggen bobbled a corner for a tap-in, Wieffer and Kadioglu made some brutal errors are were just overmatched in space. Chelsea currently are running basically .1 xG per Field Gained, a ratio almost 3 standard deviations above the league average.

But there is more to the game than just setting players off in space, you have to defend as well. Chelsea are trying to just Gray Wall it and stick everyone behind the ball, not expend any energy engaging in pressure (Brighton and Fulham have had 88% passing) and just slowing down attacks through shelling.

But it’s just not working all that well. Fulham followed up a strong attacking performance vs Chelsea with an absolutely anemic one at Sunderland (see below). That’s not a good sign. Brighton were missing arguably their 5 most potent attacking players (Minteh, Rutter, Hinshelwood, Mitoma. Ayari) and were giving debuts to Malick Yalcouye (1 goal in championship last year), started Boscagli in a brand new position at DM, started de Cuyper as a winger again (hadn’t played there since youth teams until last week) and started a teenage striker with 2 career PL goals. This was basically a Brighton C team and they racked up quite solid attacking numbers and put Chelsea under pressure throughout, 6 of their 15 shots were on target and Chelsea blocked just 1.

I don’t doubt Chelsea can keep generating a ton of xG from this setup, but not at this rate. The overall balance has to get fixed. You can’t just keep handing so much territory and so many set piece chances and so many unblocked shots to opponents. You will keep conceding too many.

Maybe it’s something they only do when they go a goal up? They’ve scored immediately in both games, but even that makes little sense. Why shell up a goal vs teams you are way better than? Xabi Alonso is a good coach and they have great talent, I expect Chelsea to fix this and play a bit more like the great teams they are trying to compete with.

Also, Malick Yalcouye joins Mikkel Damsgaard and Yan Diomande in the brutal hairline at 20 and below* category.

*you know what you are thinking

Play Backwards Into Space: Fulham’s Syrupy Struggle

Fulham had 6 shots on target vs Chelsea and then 0 at Sunderland in a limp 1-0 defeat. Without the arrows at the bottom could you tell what direction Fulham were attacking?

8 of their 11 shots were blocked in a dreadfully glacial attacking performance. I shudder to say this but whiffs of Russell Martin? In preseason when I wrote I was quite high on Fulham due to their underlying performance controlling territory last year, a smart and longtime commentor here said he was really low on them because of the huge downgrade at manager (and the associated deals with his agency to bring in Garcia and Palacios at inflated fees). This type of performance worries me and makes me think of that comment. It makes me nervous Arbeloa doesn’t seem to plan first for goals, but plans first how to hold the ball and ping it around instead...often sideways or backwards.

How can one be 96th percentile receiving, 2nd on the team in buildup and literally last in the league in buildup over expected (percentile of 0)? Well, Josh King had 8 touches in the Sunderland box and also had 4 failed dribbles near the box, 5 failed passes in the box, and had only 3 completed passes or dribbles all match that led to a Fulham threat, 2 of which came over 15 seconds from the threat. Getting into good areas is a plus! But man that’s doing nothing with it.

How good is Granit Xhaka by the way. 13th in the league in Fields Gained passing, 9 of the players ahead of him were CBs (and 2 were Man Utd midfielders gorging themselves on the beached whale carcass that was Ipswich in the second half), while Xhaka was gunning 25% of his teams bottom quarter Fields Gained total on his own. A player to admire.

Liverpool’s Worryingly Quiet Attack

Yes Jeremie Frimpong got bullied off the ball and again the Liverpool box looked woefully unprotected again at times (69% deep touch success rate was higher than Chelsea’s!) but I think this was not a red-alarm defensive performance, maybe just yellow. They at least blocked a lot of shots and were strong in the gegenpress (Forest were poor with the ball on regains).

But in attack this was a lot of probing and a lot of the ball in advanced areas without a lot of end product. It’s not easy to play against Glasner teams and they are almost always instantly good at what he gets his teams to be good at: slowing opponent forward progress and making good chances come at the end of minutes of hard labor.

Still Liverpool were super slow at getting the ball forward, had a tiny amount of set piece chances and nothing in transition. 13 shots and 3.6 set pieces (I count free kicks and throw ins at some share of a corner) is just not giving yourself many chances.

I understand why managers gravitate toward this style of team. Newcastle, Forest, Chelsea all have new managers and have gotten some great results playing simply. I think it is exponentially easier to just have your guys pile up behind the ball and let fast players run free forward when you win it in a good spot than it is to try and play with the ball.

Who would you rather be?

Newcastle are off to a flying start under Matthias Jaissle and Spurs are Spursy again under de Zerbi, right? Well that is the narrative but this game is not one you can hang that narrative on. Both my numbers and the Futi app do not have Newcastle racking up huge transition numbers, both have them comfortably under the average there. The goal was scored in transition on a brilliant finish from Anthony Elanga but was not a true great chance really and Newcastle didn’t have many or any of those truly. Spurs were far from great here, but had around 60% of the xG, deep touches and progression in this match.

One thing I would worry about if I was a Spurs fan is where is the high press or really any pressure? Nico Gonzalez completed his first 24 passes, Newcastle had a well above average progression efficiency, 90% completion after regains and a 87% buildup completion. This is a Newcastle team with a brand new central midfielder in Nico partnering Lewis Miley, Anthony Elanga on a wing, Joe Willock at 10, it’s not a technical ball-dominant side. And they were not too worried about losing the ball vs Spurs. de Zerbi’s Brighton side were not maniac high pressers but were 7th or 8th toughest in terms of efficiency against. The fact the defensive side is not very engaged or organized does give me some pause.

For Newcastle, I am not really sure where this leaves them. Some brilliant results can build positive attitudes and maybe help fuel improvement. The vibes and body language are great, those are certainly positives. The underlying performances have been unconvincing and roughly what I expected, particularly in attack. The goals scored have flattered as the attacking engine still looks a bit underpowered. Early days though and the only threat of quickly getting the ball forward has been enough so far.

Sophomore Struggles and A Top Half Team With Bottom Quarter Payroll?

Brentford followed up their thrashing of Tottenham, with another steamrolling performance, this on one the road. Leeds got a late goal but Brentford had an elite 73% of the deep touches and 67% of the xG in this one while controlling the transition game and blocking 6 of Leeds 12 shots and holding them to a putrid 22% success rate in the danger zone. A complete performance for Brentford here.

Last week I said let’s not get carried away with one week of Sangare. But this week has me sprinting behind the bandwagon trying to get on. Visually impressive, both on the tv screen and the much more important grimy old Macbook running excel screen, he is the key man for Brentford and played much more aggressively with the ball this week.

Leeds have now played Forest and Brentford and are 18th in the league in deep touches (ahead of Hull and Villa). In their season preview I said they needed better ball control to improve this year and some of what they did last year would be tough to repeat. That’s not what we are seeing at all in the early parts of the season.

Bits and Pieces

Man City were dominant vs Palace in basically peak Pep ways. Elite ball progression, tons of the ball and a lot of midfielders playing well with O’Reilly, Foden and Cherki making the City attack really hard to stop.

It was a day to pad the attacking numbers for all of Manchester United’s players. In an onslaught in the second half, every player involved likely piled up enough buildup to keep their playing card looking good for months even if they struggle. Is this the sign of anything other than Ipswich losing their heads and being overmatched and United remaining lethal at times? I lean probably not,

Despite the amazing story and scenes, I am pouring cold water on Hull being any better than expected. A week after they got .03 open play xG vs Manchester United they took 6 shots and had a league low in deep touches at Coventry. They seemed to play pretty well against the ball, though Coventry might have found something in Taiwo Awoniyi who had a big game and feels like the kind of player a very underwhelming Coventry desperately need to have a huge season. I don’t think Forest should have let him go.

Change from Preseason

Forest, City and Brentford the big winners of the week.

Thanks for reading, I hope it’s illuminating for you guys and helpful and enjoyable. I appreciate all likes, comments, discussion and criticism! A more player focused article will be coming out later in the week.

Secret Sauce Explanation

Game state and red cards are semi-accounted for (with a dollop of common sense which I will be able to give out more liberally with less Bundesliga this season). I limit penalties and huge chance xG of course, don’t think I have registered an above .45 xG chance in my data in years. I never understand models that are supposed to be forward looking literally giving like 7x an average shot to a single shot that bounced off the crossbar and fell to someone or only happened because a defender slipped. It makes zero sense, generating .7 and above chances is clearly not repeatable.

Anyway, transition chances and production, deep touches, and a mix of shots (blocked, shots on target treated differently) all go into this somewhat rough formula.

One match in the Premier League broadly doesn’t mean all that much. We all forget quickly about Fulham scoring 4 vs Man City, Arsenal struggling to contain Wolves, or Burnley pumping three in a row past Brentford if they happen in November or December. Opening weekend is different. This match can set impressions for a long time, often too long, because we’ve waited a long time, we are watching a bit closer and analyzing a bit deeper. Today we want to dig in, take what hints we can from the data and set our initial course in the right direction like a 15th century Polynesian navigator heading toward Tahiti. We start on track but are ready to correct when the wind or the waves or the pivot tables change over the upcoming days and weeks.

After the basic recap earlier in the week, I will dive deeper into a few stylistic quirks we saw from teams and highlight performances from players. We will look at standout games, really poor games and a few performances from players of interest.

Glossary

Elite Week One Production

Strikers: Joao Pedro, Bryan Mbeumo, Erling Haaland, Emersonn

Attackers: Cole Palmer, Christos Tzolis, Diego Gomez, Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Eddie Nketiah, Cody Gakpo, Maxim de Cuyper, Julio Enciso

Midfield: Myles Lewis-Skelly, Declan Rice, Bruno Fernandes, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Granit Xhaka, Marc Guehi

Fullbacks: Josko Gvardiol, Timothy Castagne, Andy Robertson

Center Backs: Virgil van Dijk, Jaka Bijol, Tarik Muharemovic, Semi Ajayi, Luka Vuskovic

A more detailed explainer of the categories included are at the bottom.

The player of the week for me was Cole Palmer. Sometimes basic talking points are good ones: Xabi Alonso will help him, he will be healthier, a summer off will refresh him. He delivered huge production drifting wide right for Chelsea, leading the league in buildup and trailing only Foden in receiving while taking 5 shots for .55 xG.

Fulham took advantage of both flanks against Chelsea, we will see Malo Gusto’s overall struggles on the right below but Castagne on the other side had an impressive night as well working on Hato.

Talk about ambition. Ipswich signed Julio Enciso, long one of the stat hounds favorites, and he immediately delivered a huge game pushing them to a win. They have followed that up with Bundesliga star CM Exequiel Palacios*. Two years ago I wrote this about Enciso:

Julio Enciso is almost certainly the next mega Brighton buy. An incredible player in progression (he isn’t really a central striker, really a 10) who has put up .62 npXG + xA over his 2 years with Brighton, firing 4.6 shots per 90. This summer for Paraguay in just over 3 90s he already has 14 shots and 6 key passes.

He has always been a bit of a selfish player, suffered some injuries, lost his way a bit, moving to France and falling off the radar. But if a 21 year old had these numbers in the French league and a solid physical engine (33.3 km/h in World Cup roughly 70-75th percentile for wingers, high sprints per 90s) I think he goes for more. He did all his damage in just 68 minutes as well.

I dropped this guy in fantasy because I thought Ipswich were too bad, I needed to focus on studs like Dwight McNeil and Tammy Abraham. Julio Enciso is still Julio Enciso.

*I wrote about Palacios:

a nice throwback to the days of Peak Pep….I called it paving a low-traffic Autobahn for the ball to move from back to front. These guys combine buildup pop with insanely efficient ball progression.

Could Ipswich threaten to stay up? At the very least a full year to scout some interesting players.

Leeds didn’t light up any attacking indicators (.7 xG and only more progression than Hull, Villa and Newcastle) but the back line of Bijol, Rodon and Muharamovic looked robust in replacing Struijk.

Speaking of units looking elite, Arsenal’s three men behind the striker just didn’t let the ball go and pushed it toward buildup at the same time, while chipping in 10 shots and 1 xG and defensive work. The three were a combined 12/18 on danger zone passes, a completion% of 67% vs a league average of 45%.

I sometimes think positions are way too strictly enforced. I remember Marsesca saying his ideas basically wouldn’t work without I think Levi Colwill in a specific slot on the field. Players can be very flexible, Anthony Gordon was Newcastle’s best striker last year as everyone sort of mocked the idea he could play up front, Marc Guehi slid into midfield so easily, Pep’s players moved all over the pitch constantly. 1.21 xG + xA and this pass map, how hard can it be?

Dreadful Games

Strikers: Richarlison, Ellis Simms

Attackers: George Hemmings, Harry Wilson, Oscar Bobb

Midfield: Lucas Bergvall, Joao Gomes, Sean Steur, Elliot Anderson, Boubacar Kamara, Caleb Yirenki, Frank Onyeka, Harrison Armstrong

Fullbacks: Milan van Ewijk, Jay Dasilva, Adam Smith, Malo Gusto, Jorrel Hato

Centerbacks: Pau Torres, Nikola Milenkovic, Issa Diop, Levi Colwill

Well that’s an interesting one. Not something I necessarily noticed or saw talked about. Not worrying yet but notable.

Big money for Elliot Anderson but he hasn’t flown out of the gates for City. 36th percentile efficiency, average receiving, and basically no buildup produced from his high touch total means he was nearly a zero in possession for Man City. He won just 4 of 10 defensive duels and got hooked after 63 minutes. A game to forget for Anderson, Marc Guehi outshone him in midfield. Turning Anderson into a metronomic controller is I think a bad use of the guy best used as a box-to-box Enzo/Bruno type in my opinion.

Chelsea’s soft defensive coverage was often down the wings, a lot of responsibility gets put on the wingbacks. Gusto was not involved in the attack too much either, passing backwards a lot as Chelsea’s low possession attack was almost entirely carried by the front 3. 60% of the buildup came from Rogers, Pedro and Palmer higher than every team bar Villa (basically zero buildup) and Ipswich (top two players listed above).

Lots of Spurs guys to pick out, I could have chosen Richarlison also who had 0 shots and basically no progression but it’s Lucas Bergvall who got snowed under defensively by the penetrative Brentford attack while producing nothing with the ball. A roller coaster summer, he seemed ready to leave, then suddenly was starting the opener, and made 2 brutal soft errors leading directly to Brentford box attacks and shots.

One of the interesting moves this summer, a guy whose end product always looked better than his open play game for a team that needs a bit more open play progression, did not produce in the opener for Leeds.

Other Interesting Debuts/Openers

Mamadou Sangare has already seen his imaginary price double. He was really good, but it was heavily tilted to a few nice box passes. Wait and see, no need to jump before we have enough mediocre Excel screenshots to be sure.

Antoine Semenyo was a guy I sort of planted a flag on by making him the header image on my 10 Players I Am Shorting article. A start about like I expected, I don’t think he’s a bad player, just not a difference maker. I didn’t use Morgan Rogers, hmm…

Yoane Wissa was electric and looked fit for the first time in a Newcastle shirt. A huge piece that can help smooth out what could be a bumpy season.

Hayden Hackney came in with some hype in an inexplicably hyped Everton team (from my perspective). A rough debut as Palace were rampant on the counter through Everton’s midfield and Hackney struggled on the ball. I am still very low on Everton’s talent level.

Rio Ngumoha didn’t exactly stake his claim on a wing for Liverpool. It was there to be taken and I am very open to the idea he’s good enough to do it but a soft Newcastle defense was a good chance to do some damage and Ngumoha kind of faded into the background.

Cesar Palacios an interesting outing in that he got into amazing positions and then did very little with the ball.

Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, the top two players in the league in sprints both had imbalanced profiles here. Frimpong with basically a free roaming, old school wingers stats without the shots (1 tackle, dribbled past twice, 2/7 on duels) and Kerkez struggling to contribute with the ball at his feet.

Team Shorts

Coventry had an above average progression efficiency vs Arsenal, it was actually 5th highest in the league. Only Arsenal, Brighton and the two Manchester sides were higher. But the extremely low penetration factor (.33 deep completions per Fields Gained was 19th in league vs league average of .88) meant nothing in output in attack.

Brentford’s massive penetration number (Deep Touch per FG) and 63% completion in the danger zone showed how they chewed Spurs up. I never looked at how correlated these two metrics are, it makes a lot of sense I guess they would be. Might be worth checking it out as the year goes along to see if it continues. This is basically the slice opponents open graph.

Liverpool and Chelsea’s above average verticality. We can see the Iraola influence already, Newcastle sat well back with very minimal high pressing but Liverpool kept firing passes forward. But Alonso? Leverkusen in their peak title season they had the least vertical passing in the Bundesliga…here Chelsea were down with the more long ball heavy teams.

Palace and Everton played a transition heavy match and Ipswich showed a bit of a transition threat through Enciso and Emersonn, admittedly against a poor Sunderland side.

One game can only bring us hints of transition, hints of how these teams will play, hints of how these players will do, hints of the underlying reality coursing through the Craven Cottage pitch, echoing around St. James Park, hints of a greater truth like the lime flavoring hints at the true burst of natural beauty buried in a can of La Croix.

Hope you enjoy and I always appreciate likes, comments and reactions!

Full Explainer

A quick explainer of the categories, I am not fully sure how they will work or if I am missing something but broadly I think these are categories that tell us a decent bit about the player. xG is xG, Cole Palmer’s .55 xG on 5 shots was 93rd percentile.

Receiving is simply Fields Gained total, Cole Palmer’s 6.8 Fields Gained was second in the league (behind Foden) but rounds to a 100th percentile.

Buildups Over Expected takes what an average player who got the ball in those positions would do and compares Palmer’s output. It’s a rough xG on a different scale. So the average player would have contributed 5.4 Buildups from Cole Palmer’s ball touch locations and Cole Palmer contributed 10.9. That +5.5 is good for 99th percentile. Buildups here credit progressive, opta line-breaking, key pass that leads directly to a dangerous transition shot the most and a header won 20 seconds from a long range pot shot the least, but you still get some credit for the 2nd (like 0.5% as much as first).

Progression Efficiency is the same idea, average player would have had 0.38 Fields Gained Per Ball Loss from those locations while Palmer had 0.4, 62nd percentile.

Defensive Production is tackles, clearances, blocks, interceptions, duels won minus duels lost, dribbled past, errors with varying weights. Palmer’s 3.4 was 80th percentile.

Defensive Zones is how Fulham moved the ball through the zones Palmer was active in. Efficiency and buildup weighted.

Welcome back Premier League. We loved the World Cup of course, but the quality of play, the history, knowledge and narratives are all much stronger in Premier League play. It’s the greatest sporting competition in the world I think, the Champions League just doesn’t quite have the volume of matches to compare does it?

We got a great first week back and will dive into it here.

While I get my metrics and tables stabilized and setup a lot of the graphics will be coming from highly recommended sources: FotMob, SofaScore, and Futi app and MarkStats website.

The Secret Sauce Landscape

Secret Sauce is a rough jumble of different metrics that I have found roughly predict performance a bit better than just xG. Game state and red cards are semi-accounted for (with a dollop of common sense which I will be able to give out more liberally with less Bundesliga this season). I limit penalties and huge chance xG of course, don’t think I have registered an above .45 xG chance in my data in years. I never understand models that are supposed to be forward looking literally giving like 7x an average shot to a single shot that bounced off the crossbar and fell to someone or only happened because a defender slipped. It makes zero sense, generating .7 and above chances is clearly not repeatable.

Anyway, transition chances and production, deep touches, and a mix of shots (blocked, shots on target treated differently) all go into this somewhat rough formula.

All are percentiles from 0 to 100, size of logo is overall score. Good defense is close to 0, at the top.

At the end of the article you can see the changes in Secret Sauce rating from preseason to now.

3 Teams Who Are Off and Running

1. Business as usual for Arsenal: Coventry had .05 xG/shot on 4 shots and the fewest box touches in the league. Tzolis looks like a high-end attacker who can create chances at a huge volume and the aura and feeling of inevitability is just oppressive. It’s like the end of A Serious Man at times watching Arsenal.

   

   A respectable 71 final third touches for Coventry vs just 3 in the box shows the absolute mismatch of Arsenal’s settled defense and Gray Wall* vs Coventry’s attacking combinations and talent.

   *ability to force teams into lots of touches in low danger areas ~40 yards from goal while rarely conceding valuable touches ~20 yards and in.

   Christos Tzolis: 8 touches in box and 4 shots led Arsenal plus 3 chances created. Just a ton of activity on the left while Arsenal still had their familiar right sided dominance with Odegaard/Saka.

   

2. No Welbeck, no Mitoma, no Minteh, no problem. Brighton were all over a helpless Villa and even with their huge xG chances limited and their second half post red card data seriously discounted they come out with the highest performance in attack of the week.

3. The 7-0 friendly win over Frankfurt might have been pretty telling. Brentford absolutely demolished a wobbly Tottenham side, taking a league leading 19 unblocked shots and piling up the most deep touches of any team in the league. Spurs had 60% possession but de Zerbi’s side had 3 first half box touches and had most of the possession in safe midfield areas. Sangare’s profile looks great but let’s not get carried away and call them geniuses and him a 100 million player based on one game. A good game, but the few highlights really stood out and it wasn’t a dominant, all-action performance. He very might well be a future mega-star but more info needed.

4 Teams Who Need To Worry

1. Aston Villa. Ollie Watkins is in limbo and Ezri Konsa left since the season preview, Tammy Abraham and Brian Madjo got hurt, and Alejandro Garnacho isn’t ready yet. That led Villa to start with a putrid front line of Buendia at striker, George Hemmings (0 goals in 1000 minutes in the Youth Premier League last season), John McGinn and Ross Barkley across the front. Several lethargic errors and a red card later and they got absolutely torn apart by Brighton. The SpreadEx projection has dropped 7 points based on all that info and quickly I have them basically just an average team once more. I love that Joao Gomes flopped in his own box to try and draw a foul and all he got for it was a Brighton goal. No flopping, no time wasting is this site’s editorial motto.

2. Tottenham. A disastrous and disjoined performance against a dominant Brentford side brought all the worries out, particularly the weakness in transition and lack of forward talent. They are still projected to end up with more points than Brentford on SpreadEx, but only just.

   

3. Bournemouth. Against a somewhat raggedy City side: Guehi playing in midfield, O’Reilly at 10, Rico Lewis at RB, and coming off a poor performance vs Arsenal, Bournemouth made no impact. 34% possession, 5 shots and 6 box touches while not really bothering City all that much defensively. In the famous draw at the end of the season City had 70% passing vs Bournemouth in the final third, it was 82% this weekend. Alvaro Rodriguez and Juanlu Sanchez looked like great signings, Rodriguez played 0 minutes in friendlies and Daniel Jebbison subbed on ahead of him. Juanlu also hasn’t played a minute yet. Maybe they are both nursing injuries? Can’t find much info.

4. Now the tuxedos seem fucked up moment for Manchester United.

   

   The loss to Hull now makes the friendly disaster vs Milan (33% possession and 93% Milan completion) look much more worrying. Hull allowed the 2nd most xG in the Championship last year, only Sheffield Wednesday (who finished on 0 points) had a worse defense. United didn’t didn’t crack 1.1 xG until the 75th minute, they racked up about 40% of their xG in desperation-down-2-goals-final-15-minutes-Maguire-up-top time. Their total open play xG was under .9. Hull City will be terrible and barely advanced up the pitch (.03 open play xG). United’s scuffling start to the season means the Carrick Countdown is on.

Who Needs More Information

1. Newcastle and Liverpool. A 2-2 draw with a historic amount of booing of Alexander Isak saw a lot of Liverpool’s weaknesses from last years return. They conceded too many transition chances and had a bit of a struggle to convert possession into great chances (a heavy set piece reliance and an astonishing 16 of their 27 shots were blocked). Also the sort of frantic Iraola forward passing strategy didn’t seem fully bedded in (84% passing against an incredibly passive Newcastle defense). But it was far from a disaster in a match Liverpool probably should have won. For Newcastle you are happy with the competitiveness and the result but it was very much a “small team” type performance in terms of bunkering and blocking and mostly isolated and low number counters. They did break with pace: Wissa, Osula and Barnes were the 3 fastest players on the pitch and Wissa in particular looked very strong both at 10 and up front. It’s obviously way too early, but maybe this is how Newcastle will want to play this year? A bit Dyche-y with the reliance on blocks, maybe Dyche-y with high end pace? The midfield was overwhelmed, Sean Steur made 0 tackles or interceptions and didn’t complete a pass within 50 yards of goal before being hooked early and Miley was very conservative and withdrawn as well. It will be interesting to see Nico Gonzalez in this midfield and how Newcastle play vs lesser opponents.

   

   .

   

Game of the Week Award

Chelsea 3, Fulham 2

Graphic from the brilliant MarkStats

An all-action debut (at least for 55 minutes) for both managers saw Chelsea’s new look front three combine for 3 goals and 2 assists while the Blues poured in and pressured the Fulham box with the second most deep touches and shots in the league. However, Fulham led the league in transition production, repeatedly and pretty easily getting behind Chelsea even pretty late in the game down a goal. It was fascinating to see Chelsea so low on the possession stats: 39% in the first half and 37% in the second half. Low possession with super softness against transition and a boatload of shots is not the ideal defensive setup.

Was it a good start for Gonzalo Garcia? A nice header on a rebound was 1 of his only 2 box touches. He dropped deep a ton, 32 pass attempts for a Fulham striker vs Chelsea is oddly high, 0 chances created or passes into the penalty area. Incomplete for now.

Updated Secret Sauce Rankings

Hope you enjoy and my typical box scores with a few more unique stats you can’t find elsewhere will be back soon. Always appreciate likes, comments and shares and the comments have been great recently, I enjoy talking ball with you guys.

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I disagree with this grouping. They gave us a great title race last year but I see one team on the way down and the other on the way up this year. The markets have them (or had them when I started this series) roughly even with each other but I would be very surprised if they wound up within 5 points. We are onto our final preview, just in time for the season opener tomorrow! It’s Man City and Arsenal.

Previous preseason pieces

Tier 2: The Elite

Tier 3: The Aspirants

Tier 4: Upper Middle Class

Tier 5: Lower Middle Class

Tier 6: Safety First

10 Players I Am Buying Stock In

10 Players Whose Stock I Am Shorting

Lots of the player data and images is coming from ScoutLab. The rest often comes from my metrics, glossary here.

Manchester City

SpreadEx Prediction: 75.5 points, 2nd

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 94, 2nd

Secret Sauce is a combination of my xG, deep touches, progression and transition for and against. Grades go from 2 (Burnley) to 97 (Arsenal) with 50 being Fulham averaging 50% of everything.

Topline Takeaway: Man City are at risk of becoming just another Big Six side without Pep. Trends and talent are not heading in the right direction and is Maresca the one to keep them at the top?

Big Changes

Huge ones. The best manager of our era is gone, one of the best players of our era in Rodri is gone, and one of City’s all time greats in Bernardo Silva is gone. John Stones is gone. Assorted backups are gone (Nico Gonzalez, Reijnders, Savinho probably for some reason, Marmoush probably) while Elliot Anderson is in, Bouaddi seems to be coming (87% on Kalshi as our writers are working on this piece) and maybe Enzo?

It doesn’t really all add up, Doku got injured in the community shield and Jack Grealish came on, fresh from the beaches of Spain, to play the second half. I never really thought Grealish would play again for Man City. Right now they have Cherki, Foden, Semenyo, Doku, Grealish and Haaland for 4 attacking spots. I haven’t seen many links to new attackers but they have to sign more goal scorers surely? The team looks totally incomplete heading into the season. Kovacic in midfield, Khusanov at RB, Grealish up front, none of it really felt serious or complete.

I have not been a huge fan of Maresca’s at Chelsea

I don’t actually think Enzo Maresca was happy with Chelsea being such a transition oriented team. They looked at their best when playing in transition…But I always felt like he wanted them to play more controlled and slower, and when they did so they rarely looked that threatening. A huge % of shots were blocked the past two years under Maresca as they just struggled to break teams down in settled attack…Chelsea were very good at creating off of takeaways but it felt sort of just due to their talent and not necessarily 100% from tactics. Too often teams would get high quality shots against Chelsea from few passes.

He is stepping into massive, massive shoes here. He kept Chelsea kind of playing decent but it never really felt fresh or creative from the manager, a 66 points per 38 game point pace over 57 matches doesn’t really scream he is ready to just keep up Pep’s work.

Overall, these are massive, seismic changes. Rodri was no longer the player he used to be when he was probably the best in the world but he was just the player of the World Cup and was massive for City last season.

Bernardo Silva had lost a step also but played nearly 3k minutes last year, starting 34 PL games, at a high level. He and Rodri could usually solve almost any sort of block or pressing option and were so perfect working with Pep, such well-rounded and unselfish offensive players that free up your Haaland’s, your Doku’s, your Cherki’s to gun for goal and not worry about having to do too much ball progression.

By the way, Pep Confidential is a great soccer book for fans of mine. Not the best writing and can be repetitive but as an insight to training and Pep it’s very solid. The Man City All or Nothing was great also and I can’t wait for the new one A Beautiful Obsession. He does love agreeing to these books and shows but I never really feel his passion is inauthentic or for the cameras in a way you get whiffs of from Mourinho and Pep as a human is so much more accessible and fun to watch and root for than Arteta’s purely optimized coaching persona. Still my favorite moment is probably Hansi Flick’s disgust at Julian Brandt being repeatedly late to meetings at the World Cup and the intrusion of politics to a bored and disengaged looking team.

Summary and Way Forward

Now let’s not get it wrong: City were still a powerhouse territory wise last season. They had 68% of the deep touches in their matches, most in the league. They had 65% of the Fields Gained, an even bigger edge on 2nd in that category. But the peak City defense was long gone.

Last 5 years xGA

25→34→36→50→45

Yes they still had the second lowest xGA but they were closer to Sunderland and Wolves (57 xGA in 17th and 18th) than Arsenal (31 xGA in first). It’s a long term possession fall (69% to 60%) but also an against the ball weakening. The open play defense was even worse than the topline number, a dominant dead ball defense made the numbers look better.

No team had a softer gray wall, a higher xG/shot allowed or a higher xG per deep touch allowed, it was basically get within 40 yards of goal and get some very good chances.

Soft gray wall means very few touches needed in the gray zone to get into the orange zone. The average team takes 3 touches in the gay zone for every 1 in the orange zone, Man City opponents took 1.2.

They didn’t press high, they weren’t super vulnerable to transition or off ball losses, it was just regular settled play often where teams worked their way through and it was like the last 40 yards were a slide taking you quickly into good areas. This will be something Maresca has a chance of improving upon Pep’s work.

Now those numbers were not that painful because City were still the best attacking team in the league, taking them close to the title. It was a similar xG drop overall the last 5 years

92→82→83→70→71

This is much more a function of just having the ball less. Outside that outrageous 92 xG season, the others are per pass roughly what City still put up.

No one could push you back with clean progression and long possessions and successful passes in the danger zone like City. Without Pep, Rodri, Bernardo and more will it be the same? The risk of having ‘bad’ Chelsea or Arsenal without the dead ball quality type attacking seasons is just way up now.

Key Players

The transfer market work has me puzzled and a bit pessimistic on if City can just keep on rolling without Pep. The 9-digit proposal to bring Ayyoub Bouaddi from France over seems likely to eventually happen. He is a pretty tall guy with clear ball skills but the statistical resume in France was really weak.

11th percentile VAEP there (Valuing Actions by Estimating Probabilities) is brutal. Bentnacur and Baleba comps are not exciting. Now talented and raw players can develop, Declan Rice a great example. But he was miles ahead of Bouaddi when he got his big money move. The odds of Bouaddi even being a reliable starter this year seem really low, much less a positive player.

At the World Cup I wrote about Morocco’s dead midfield

The midfield pairing of Bouaddi and Aynaoui combine to average .05 Fields Gained per Ball Touch and .02 buildup per ball touch. Compare that to similar or worse teams

-Canada (Saliba/Eustaquio: .11 and .11)

-Belgium (Tielemans and Raskin: .12 and .1)

-Croatia (Modric and Kovacic: .09 and .04)

-Switzerland (Xhaka and Freuler: .09 and .08)

The Moroccan midfielders are just there to move the ball defensively basically, very little offensive purpose so far.

The other links are even more worrying. This guy is another rumor. A 22 year old with this output in Brazil.

While a guy who puts up superstar per-minute numbers who I love in Savinho is seemingly on his way out.

I wrote about Elliot Anderson, a player I have loved for a long time, at that same link. I don’t think he is best used as a controlling 6, he can cover a lot of ground and defend a lot but at his best I think he is making plays and being aggressive with the ball from the 8 role. I hope that is where is deployed.

Antoine Semenyo scored a lot of goals for City but I am unconvinced he is the kind of player that helps them to their goals. I wrote here about him and his pretty average open play numbers that have been buoyed by a hot streak in finishing (17 G off 11.2 xG). I know he is two-footed and can probably beat xG, but not by 6 goals.

Now there is still huge talent all over the squad.

.39 open play xA last year for Cherki was behind only Michael Olise in all of Europe’s top 5 leagues last year.

You have a CF who now has a case for best current player in the world.

You have elite center backs in Marc Guehi and Josko Gvardiol.

You have a unique weapon from the left in Nico O’Reilly.

Phil Foden, Jeremy Doku, and more are classic Man City players. This will be a good team, but we are judging on truly elite standards right now. They are unlikely to return to the near 70% possession days and I don’t see other easy ways back to league winning numbers.

There is more talent going out the door than coming in right now.

Prediction

The squad is getting worse, the transfer targets are very questionable, the trend is downwards and they’ve lost the relentless genius holding a lot of it together and replaced him with a guy who has been ~ok as a manager. I know that is partially baked into the projection, but the last two seasons even with Pep and a deeper squad (as of now) City averaged just under 75 points. I think they are at a big risk of finishing outside the top 3 for the first time since 2015/16. I see them very close to the level of Chelsea and Liverpool and not that close to Arsenal. Under 75.5.

Arsenal

SpreadEx Prediction: 78 points, 1st

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 98, 1st

Topline Takeaway: The rich get richer and the champs get better. Arsenal have a sustainable process and keep adding pieces, plus will probably get more from their difference makers this season. A strong favorite.

Big Changes

First off, I must admit Arsenal rile me up. No team since maybe the LeBron era Heat annoy more more or I root against more than Arsenal. I will try not to let that overcolor the analysis here. Onto the changes…

Nothing negative. As usual Arsenal have the financial power to just keep anyone they plan on playing at all forever while continuing to pick off most anyone (besides Vini Jr) they want.

Bruno Guimaraes is in*, Tzolis replaces Trossard, Konsa is in, I assume a couple more will come in because that’s what Arsenal do: just buy peak age players for enormous fees without any bother to make sure their 4th string right back is covered by an elite player.

*Arsenal have now bought arguably the best players from West Ham, Brentford, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa. Let’s just look at the list of 32 million plus buys over the past 4 seasons

Attack: Havertz 75m, Gyokeres 67m, Madueke 56m, Tzolis 40m

Midfield: Rice 117m, Bruno 88m, Zubimendi 70m, Eze 69m, Merino 32m

Defense: Konsa 50m, Calafiori 44m, Timber 40m, Hincapie 40m, Raya 32m

Sales of over 32m: none. Zero. Nada. Null. A 14-0 win for the incomings! Tough to compete with that if you are a Villa or a Newcastle, it just is.

Arsenal already had 4 stars on their team to start this period in Saka, Odegaard, Saliba and Gabriel and have bought one and a half teams worth of players over the past 4 windows.

Eze, Merino, Hincapie, Madueke, and Zubimendi I have combining to average under 1000 minutes this year and Arsenal have recently bought them for over 200 million in transfer fees.

Now the teams does a lot of things well, but the margin for error is just gigantic with this financial power backing you.

Summary and Way Forward

Arsenal broke a huge mental barrier last year winning the league, you could see it weigh on them as they tightened up and were legit choking for a few weeks near the end of the season. But they got through it, they should play a bit lighter this year.

The defense actually slipped a bit from previous years but remained absurdly stifling. The categories they led the league by over half a standard deviation or more in

-least transition production allowed by 1.9 standard deviations (over Aston Villa in second)

-least transition production allowed per pass by a standard deviation over Leeds

-least xG allowed by 1.8 st devs (14 xG fewer than Man City)

-fewest dead ball opportunities allowed by .9 St devs over Man City (8 vs 10.3 per game)

-lowest deep completion per Fields Gained (the penetration category on those charts) by .9 st devs (over Palace)

-similarly, lowest xG per Fields Gained allowed by .9 st devs (over Man Utd)

-lowest xG/shot allowed by .7 st devs over Villa

They are first in all kinds of other non-volume defensive stats as well

-opponent deep touch success rate

-opponent buildup rate off regains

-opponent progression efficiency

Basically they have crafted a perfect side of the ball.

It comes with an attack that rarely veers wildly into transition so games never open up (we saw a bit of that early on the league and CL before shutting up shop later on), and wants to stay in position to defend well as priority #1, #2 and #3 are not letting the opponent have transition or easy chances. But it’s not as toothless as we like to pretend it is when trying to downplay Arsenal. Even putting dead balls aside they were 5th in open play xG at 1.18 per game, just slightly (.1 or less xG) behind Chelsea, Liverpool and Man Utd. That’s not amazing or even great but throw in the best dead ball attack in league and the by far, 1.8 z score best defense and it is fearsome and intimidating to fans of more fiscally restrained teams like myself.

The defensive side of dead ball production is even more impressive than the offensive side.

Why would any of this really change? They are adding fresh blood, the mental block is gone, none of the players are too old now or coming off fluky seasons. In fact, Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka combined for just 41 starts in the PL. Viktor Gyokeres had a tough adjustment to the league, Havertz was hurt for long stretches and Calafiori as well. You can expect more from all of those offensive weapons this year and you added Bruno and Tzolis. They are 40% to win the title, but that feels really low to me.

There are no big leaks like Man City’s final third defending, Liverpool’s lack of depth in midfield and shaky fullbacks, or Man Utd’s lack of territorial control. It’s just a sort of compacting machine, slowly and inevitably rolling through it’s less robust opposition.

Key Players

It sort of blew my mind when Arsenal were going for Vini Jr and everyone continued to act like they needed to sign Iliman Ndiaye or someone to play LW after they signed Tzolis. They got one of the top guys on the market already and just continue to relentlessly pursue an even better player.

Playing for an overmatched Belgian team in the CL (27th in xGD), Tzolis put up a sterling suite of stats, including .51 open play xG + xA which would have been 8th in the entire competition behind 3 Bayern, 2 Real Madrid and 2 Atleti players. This guy is a superstar that I let slip through my hands in my fantasy auction because I needed money for Alvaro Rodriguez and Ismaila Sarr…don’t be like me.

One big reason Arsenal’s open play attack looked better was the emergence of truly attacking fullbacks like Calafiori and especially Jurrien Timber. When both are healthy their open play settled attack starts to look genuinely threatening.

I always rate Odegaard as one of the true difference-makers in the league. Sometimes you got a feeling people thought players like Eberechi Eze, who aren’t even close to his level, could replace what Odegaard brought. Not at all. Odegaard brings world-class final product, progression and creation and is in his peak years.

It’s kind of hard to pick which guys to single out, could be either CB, Declan Rice but let’s go with Saka.

His connection with Odegaard has driven so much of Arsenal’s progression, danger and truly defense over the years as they tilt field slowly forward in good defending position. Probably they will get 2k more minutes from the duo this year?

It’s hard to play striker for Arsenal I think. They don’t try to release the striker a ton, don’t play too many risky balls where the striker is one-on-one and if the play comes off he has an easy chance because that risks opening the game up.

Prediction

It’s very hard to imagine Man City or Liverpool being outright better than Arsenal this season. Man City for the above reasons and Liverpool will probably have some bumps and bruises early with a new coach, some squad weaknesses and transfer business lingering late in the summer. I can squint and imagine a rampant Chelsea just piling up 80+ xG with a finely tuned, Europe-free, high talent attack giving Arsenal a huge Klopp v Pep style battle. But how to picture Arsenal regressing into the mid-70s is very hard. They have averaged 83 points over the past 4 years and just keep accumulating talent and none of their edges seem to be really degrading.

They could play this lineup in the cups and CL

Mosquera, Konsa, Hincapie, White

Zubimendi, Myles-Skelly, Eze

Havertz, Madueke, Martinelli

and have World Cup stalwart Mikel Merino and youngsters Max Dowman and Ethan Nwaneri ready to sub on (and Gabriel Jesus) without fatiguing their first 11 at all if they need to. A far cry from Wataru Endo or Mason Miley minutes.

Could probably still be in the mix for a top 8 seed in CL? Anyway, to beat Arsenal to the title will take best in Europe type season from someone. We know they will deliver.

Strong over 78.5 points.

Final Table and Projections

A reminder these are not financial advice, I can show you my history in gambling to prove it: I am about even. If you know gamblers and can translate, that means horrible losses.

Top to bottom is my projected table, left teams I am lower on than market, right teams I am higher on than market.

Brentford, Forest, Palace and Leeds are all lumped together in the ‘about right’ together. I didn’t mess with the promoted teams, they change so much, I don’t track Championship with my metrics, it isn’t really worth it. Though I do like some of the names I see linked with Ipswich.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this, let me know where you agree or disagree or your own projections!

It always teaches me so much about the league and I hope you can get some enjoyment and information out of it as well.

With five spots to the Champions League seemingly likely to come to England almost every year that means the teams in this group (Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United) will see any season without CL qualification as a near disaster. These are the elites of the league, but all have some worries and flaws that keep them from being put in true title contention for now. Liverpool had a flat season last year and a new manager making a step up, Chelsea had a goal difference under 10, and Manchester United’s style seems a bit hard to recreate along with a manager without bonafides. I like two of these teams to flash title contention and one to be a good candidate to miss out on Top 5. Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea take up positions 3, 4, and 5 on SpreadEx’s preseason market.

Previous preseason pieces

Tier 3: The Aspirants

Tier 4: Upper Middle Class

Tier 5: Lower Middle Class

Tier 6: Safety First

10 Players I Am Buying Stock In

10 Players Whose Stock I Am Shorting

Lots of the player data and images is coming from ScoutLab. The rest often comes from my metrics, glossary here.

Chelsea

SpreadEx Prediction: 68 points, 5th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 78, 5th

Secret Sauce is a combination of my xG, deep touches, progression and transition for and against. Grades go from 2 (Burnley) to 97 (Arsenal) with 50 being Fulham averaging 50% of everything.

Topline Takeaway: Chelsea are setup perfectly for a monster season, elite talent everywhere (including at manager), no Europe, and several fluky and easily fixable problems from 24/25 unlikely to bother them again.

Big Changes

The Ager of Men and Respecter of the Ball is gone and the most stylish and straight out of central casting manager is in: Xabi Alonso.

His imprint on Leverkusen was incredibly noticeable, his Leverkusen side outplayed Bayern to a title in Germany, one of the great accomplishments of recent seasons. A high-control, high field-tilt, and most importantly high danger on change of possession attack is what he will bring to Chelsea after a bit of muddled managing for years.

His teams at Leverkusen almost had a finger print with how often that moved the ball through the center

Against the ball they were more sort of Arteta-style defense rather than Kloppo or Iraola or Hürzeler, they try to make you work really hard and make lots of passes to get a shot rather than truly press really high along with a very solid transition defense.

From an old article:

No huge gegenpress, opponents complete a roughly average amount of passes after the turnovers but not to great goal threat effect.

Opponents can pass the ball around easily without moving it forward, but it’s not super easy to move it forward. They let you get a bit of progression but not into good areas.

Transfer wise Morgan Rogers is in, Lacroix is in, a new RB in Palestra is in, Quenda is in (to play…?), Barco is in, a striker from France with .65 xG is in in Emmanuel Emegha, a new LB is in in Chavarria, Welbeck and Jordan Henderson are in, some 18 year old from Kairat Almaty is in for 2.4 million for some reason (already loaned to Burnley). Did I miss anyone? Yes some 10 million Brazilian youngster.

Cucurella is gone and Enzo might be gone in terms of key players.

Summary and Ways Forward

Somehow Chelsea ended the year -3 on dead ball xG (12.6 for and 15.6 against) despite being +60 in dead ball opportunities. They had 3rd most dead ball chances for and 18th most dead ball xG for.

The two teams right above them in dead ball opportunity edge were Newcastle +84 and Arsenal +128. Their xG gap on dead balls was +4.4 and +11.3. If Chelsea had performed per dead ball at those teams pace they would have immediately picked up 10 goals. That seems like very low-hanging fruit to pick up.

Another bit of low-hanging fruit will be fixing the absurd xGA/shot problem. An attempted and mostly effective high press that had a weak Gray Wall and weak change of possession defense. If all Xabi Alonso does is fix dead balls and take the xGA/shot to just bad and not atrocious levels, that’s +14 in the GD which would have been good enough for 3rd in that category.

But I think his eyes will be set higher. Chelsea have no annoying European competition to play in, they have insane talent across the pitch. I am not a Morgan Rogers fan but I still count at least 6 truly elite talents across the pitch. I think they have an elite manager and very fixable issues, this was a team with really strong basics last year just very sloppy on the margins. 8 red cards in the PL! Twice as many as anyone else. A young, injury-riddled team dealing with the CL strain with a poor manager situation, the red cards and still comfortably fourth in deep touch %.

Players like Neto and Delap contributed almost 4k minutes in attack, those minutes will be replaced by much better players this year. The situation is just in a much better place in basically every possible area. For their sake, they just need to keep Enzo Fernandez.

Key Players

One of the most bizarrely underrated players in the world. Fernandez is consistently one of the best players in the Premier League, consistently one of the best players in the World Cup, he’s put up basically Bruno Fernandes numbers recently and gets none of the respect. People seem to just not like his personality and start picking away. He doesn’t do enough defensive duels…ok, well he’s arguably the best attacking midfielder in the world. More xG + xA in open play than Bruno Fernandes by the way.

I wrote about one of who I think is the best players in the league in Estevao.

And why I think Morgan Rogers is a comical overpay here.

Can Xabi Alonso fix Cole Palmer. I know there was some blame of the groin and some other injuries, I hope that is correct. I closely followed him for years after trading John McGinn for him when his salary was $1 in our fantasy league, he carried me for years before I sent him (now $73) away this summer for a $30 MGW, $7 Timber and $6 Damsgaard. I just worry his pedestrian production last year was maybe a bit more of a dip than just 100% injury explained. If anyone can get peak Palmer back it’s probably Xabi Alonso with a full summer and no Europe with this talent around him.

I doubted Joao Pedro last summer. I shipped a pretty cheap JP away in fantasy thinking he didn’t have a big time shot/goal threat in him, that he was a great player going to be lost amidst the Chelsea buildup stars like Enzo and Palmer. But Pedro showed his talents are even more widespread than I already recognized by delivering .5 xG and showing he has that in his locker.

Brazil taking Neymar and not Joao Pedro to the World Cup is one of the all-time clown moves.

Another player with basically literally everything in his locker shifted all over the pitch during a nearly 4k minute season delivering time and again in Reece James. I think he’s one of the best passers and handlers of the ball in the world and use any chance I can to praise him. Only 26 years old I think he can play basically any role for Alonso, RWB, CB, or CM.

Moises Caicedo is far from a natural ball progressor but he has learned and improved year on year. A serious ball winner who can progress cleanly is a huge bonus and core piece to allow the wide players to get forward.

Prediction

Even if nothing changed and Chelsea ran it back with Poch, Maresca, or maybe Rosenior, this would have been a team hard to put lower than 4th. That’s what they got to last year in field control even with 8 reds and all the chaos. I think their over/under is about right without the upgrades. Upgrade in talent (Palmer healthy, more Estevao, more signings), major upgrade at manager, no Europe, many cheaply fixable leaks like dead balls, horrific xGA/shot and red cards makes this an easy strong over 68 points.

Manchester United

SpreadEx Prediction: 69 points, 4th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 83, 4th

Topline Takeaway: A prime candidate for regression after a super efficient 2025/26 faces questions on whether it can continue or the team can improve enough to repeat.

Big Changes

Casemiro is gone and Andrey Santos and Tielemans are in in midfield (and maybe Baleba as well, which would be quite an error in my mind). It will be Carrick’s first full season as manager, I am not fully convinced he is good. I think Amorim was building something really good at United and based on on-field results his firing was really harsh. It’s not rare for a new manager to sort of just improve the mood or keep things going mostly the same and get a lot of credit for what was basically already in place (see one Slot, Arne), in United’s case I think we will find out pretty quickly what Carrick has. Some serious warning signs this preseason, when they faced Amorim and with a first choice lineup had 33% possession and allowed AC Milan to complete 93% of their passes in a woeful performance. The United style that drove them to a deserved top 4 finish does require some unique parts, we will get into that below.

I think Casemiro will be very hard to replace, he became a whipping boy a few years ago and never got proper credit for how well he played these last two seasons

It was really common to basically blame Casemiro for a lot of what was going wrong for United over the past years with many top analysts basically calling for him to retire, that he was done. He’s having a very good season and driving his team toward the Champions League.

Summary and Ways Forward

My secret sauce rated United solidly 4th last year and right on Liverpool’s heels but I am not totally convinced it is a robust 4th. My thoughts:

-League leading buildup rate off regains

-2nd in league in transition activation rate, a measure of how often they produce in transition per total offensive touch

-League lowest xG allowed per deep completion

-3rd in deep touch success rate

Those are lots of very, very high efficiency metrics that turned a team with deep touch% numbers that look a lot like Aston Villa, Newcastle, Bournemouth, and Fulham into a team that on xG looked better than Liverpool and near Man City. This is simply deep touches for divided by total deep touches:

I can broadly understand how an athletic, flexible and creative front line (Cunha, Mbeumo, Amad) triggered by an aggressive, high quality attacking base of Bruno and Casemiro can be this lightning, devastating transitional side but the defensive side of it…I don’t know. How did they wind up with the 3rd lowest xG allowed while allowing 7th most deep touches is a big question, is it repeatable?

The other teams who outdid their deep touch numbers in similar ways were Everton, West Ham and Brentford…all sort of shell high block defensive teams who rarely push forward in open play. United had an average Gray Wall, blocked some shots and opponents had average deep touch success rates. I don’t exactly see this being a repeatable formula.

Key Players

So how can United improve their basic field control? Well replacing the risk-taking swashbuckling Casemiro as Bruno’s partner with a 3-man midfield including Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans seems to be the main idea. Mainoo filled in at times last year, and Carrick tried this but it didn’t ever really tick up. I worry playing with a more traditional midfield and fewer true attacking players could improve the territory a bit but at the cost of the transition blitz and we just see kind of a Europa League level United.

I talked Amad here, I love the player and hope he continues to be a core starter for United. He can defend, attack, get in the box, progress, do it all guy who has been on the wrong end of his expected goal numbers. A mega star is in there.

That does make who starts in attack a bit tough. If you start two midfielders behind Bruno and a back 4, you have Amad, Rashford, Mbeumo, Sesko, Cunha, and Dorgu all fighting for 3 spots. If you play the classic striker in Sesko, you almost certainly will be leaving out either Mbeumo or Diallo, whose connection was one of the main reasons the attack was so lethal last year. The fluidity and aggression could suffer.

Prediction

This team is being over predicted. The underlying metrics were good but built on a sort of Plan A that worked perfectly and a defensive setup that to me doesn’t seem sustainable. I think the new manager in Carrick is unlikely to keep that Plan A functioning at full speed with a squad with lots of solid talent but no clear talent gap over their competitors at the very top. The change will see a more Europa League-y type team that can’t dominate matches at the level you need to to be this highly predicted. Under 69 points and a bit closer to Villa/Brighton maybe than Liverpool/Chelsea.

Liverpool

SpreadEx Prediction: 70.5 points, 3rd

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 86, 3rd

Topline Takeaway: The big spend of last summer should provide bigger returns this year as Liverpool get a fresh manager to recharge the already solid base.

Big Changes

Arne Slot is out and in comes Iraola.

At the start of last season I wrote:

I am worried Arne Slot is actually basically a…manager who the leftover Klopp-ball and raw talent in transition carried to occasionally pleasing to the eye and soul style of play last season…His Feyenoord sides were incredibly hard to break down without really risking much to light up the scoreboard

I omitted the part where I used Arteta as a kind of negative comparison, my Arsenal hatred got the best of the there.

And it turned out Slot was carried by left over muscle memory for the large part!

It will be interesting to see how high-tempo and vertical Liverpool will play with the ball under Iraola. Bournemouth were absurdly high on both, leading to track meets of matches with all kinds of action and very little stagnation near opponents goal. Liverpool are much more capable of dominating games and opponents will presumably drop deeper but will Iraola do his thing and force his style on others. Klopp did so through huge vertical attacks off regains and imposed wild game states often, it will be fascinating to see.

Mo Salah is gone and maybe Barcola and Mbaye are in and maybe Gakpo is out? Konate is gone while Jacquet and Araujo are in at CB.

Summary and Ways Forward

Last year Liverpool saw awful shot quality while opponents ripped through Liverpool in transition: look at that penetration number above. I think Slot was basically a sit off them and make them work Glasner-type manager with a squad that wanted to press really high and dominate territory. It just didn’t quite mix well.

A massive difference in dead ball quality between Liverpool’s threat per dead ball (slightly below average) and threat conceded (worst in league) reminds you a bit of Chelsea’s problems, I don’t see why that can’t be fixed.

Of course they are bringing in the transition king in Iraola from Bournemouth, who also had huge dead ball problems. I generally think being awful at dead balls is not a schematic problem, or if it is it surely is one that can be fixed a lot quicker than open play ones. I don’t see physical reasons Liverpool can’t be average at dead balls.

Chance quality improvement is likely to be a talent infusion along with playing Iraola’s more open and high-tempo game. Barcola seems likely to come, Wirtz was amazing this summer with Germany and should be settled more in his second year, physical questions remain but you would expect better performance in his second year.

Key Players

Last year Liverpool were excited they just signed one of the best forwards in the world. He was never really fit until he got a serious injury then just limped along to a very poor season. This year Alexander Isak is healthy and will be looking to return or exceed his .7 xg + xa numbers he reached at Newcastle. This is almost certainly the largest addition any of the elite teams have made this year.

Unless it is this guy. The always reliable Kalshi has it over 80% he heads to Liverpool and he looks like a special talent. His 24/25 Champions League campaign of over 1k minutes had him over 97th percentile at 4 key metrics for a winger and above 75th percentile on the others.

I am not really sure why they are letting Curtis Jones go for a pretty small fee. A huge hole-plugger he has always looked just like a clear starting midfielder on any team for me. I am not as down on the midfield as some are (Mac Allister’s sprint numbers actually went up last year, the narrative his legs are going seems very weak to me) but Jones as depth/competition through every position would make me feel much better than trying to replace him in the market or through Harvey Elliott, whose numbers have been great in the past but I have serious fitness concerns on and basically didn’t play any last year.

The concern I do have that can hold this team back from a return to title conention is at fullback. Jeremie Frimpong just is not a classic back four fullback, he is a winger. I am sure I’ve written about this before but I was in attendance to watch Xabi-led Leverkusen play Hoffenheim and Frimpong spent most of the second half standing and walking around the halfway line when Hoffenheim were attacking so he could be ready to attack in transition.

I am far from convinced Milos Kerkez is at the level needed for a top end team. Conor Bradley I really like but is a ways off returning from injury. Compare this to Timber, O’Reilly, James, Gvardiol, Calafiori types and you can see the gap.

Prediction

A team that controlled territory at a clear 3rd best in league (65% of deep touches compared with 4th place at 58%) is a very strong base to build on. Florian Wirtz you’d think will improve in his second year, they get a fresh Alexander Isak and probably an elite winger in Barcola to help fix the chance quality problems. A new staff that lives in transition and with a high press comes in to help fix that and the dead ball problems seem to have no reason to be sticky. How quickly the philosophical changes bed in from the new staff, a weak fullback room and the bizarre Jones offload are the only question marks for me. That leaves a somewhat flawed team but one that should have a run at the title race if Arsenal aren’t immaculate. Over 70.5 points.

As always, appreciate the reads, comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoy!

The Community Shield is done and dusted, fantasy drafts completed, transfer market…somehow still open for 2 weeks. It always bugs me how the opening weeks of the season are just in the midst of chaos, we always hear how managers need time and training to get their ideas into teams and players and then suddenly Semenyo arrives and is immediately starting like he did for City last year, or Woltemande and Wissa are there three games into the season. Anyway, all that to say is we are closing in on the top of the table in this preview season with the season looming at the end of this week. This article takes a look at two teams aspiring to join the big guns. One a financial member of the Big Six but far from it on the pitch in recent seasons and the other a middle class member pushing their head up in points in recent seasons but still with some doubts about underlying performance.

Tottenham and Aston Villa take up positions 6 and 7 on SpreadEx’s preseason market.

Previous preseason pieces

Tier 4: Upper Middle Class

Tier 5: Lower Middle Class

Tier 6: Safety First

10 Players I Am Buying Stock In

10 Players Whose Stock I Am Shorting

Lots of the player data and images is coming from ScoutLab. The rest often comes from my metrics, glossary here.

Aston Villa

SpreadEx Prediction: 58 points, 7th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 57, 8th

Secret Sauce is a combination of my xG, deep touches, progression and transition for and against. Grades go from 2 (Burnley) to 97 (Arsenal) with 50 being Fulham averaging 50% of everything.

Topline Takeaway: A finely balanced and tuned machine, Emery has built Villa completely in his image and this high floor, low ceiling squad consistently churn out slightly above average performances and I don’t see why that will stop.

Big Changes

Morgan Rogers, Donyell Malen and Youri Tielemans are gone, Amadou Onana is injured and Villa are back in the Champions League. Joao Gomes, Alejandro Garnacho and Johan Manzambi are in and more could be on the way after the absurd 130 million Euro fee received for Rogers. But you never really know with Villa, they are always battling various fines and regulations meant to keep them from continuing to invest in their successful run.

Summary and Ways Forward

The intricacy of Villa’s attacking play is very high and truly a bit weird. Patterns, spacing, timing all seem so finely balanced to basically create 10% better than league average numbers. Only Chelsea and City had higher buildup completion%, Villa were one of the highest in terms of long possession rate, one of the highest in terms of centrality, and one of the highest in terms of deep touch success rate.

But in the end their xG, deep touches, shots and Fields Gained were all 51st-56th percentile. In their previous top 4 season in 23/24 things were totally different…the xG, deep touches, shots and Fields Gained were all from the 51st-*55th* percentile with all the other extras (buildup comp%, long possession%, centrality, deep touch success rate) all very high as well. It’s a bit like a pointillist painting that looks pretty good from far away then you look in closer and realize just how much planning and effort went into it and think…it still just looks pretty good.

Another quirk of Emery is how often his team has the ball far from goal, the intricate centrality doesn’t lead to the standard progression you see from other teams who hold the ball a long time (Liverpool, City, Arsenal in the top left).

This does mean they are much less likely than big field tilt teams to spend a lot of time going sideways in the Gray Zone.

Against the ball they are not going to pressure you high: only 3 teams allowed a higher buildup completion% (Fulham, West Ham and Wolves). They want to hold a mid block and let you keep the ball far away at a low pace and make their box hard to break through (5th lowest deep touch success rate). It’s a highly structured and tactical system that works together to lead to lots of patient passing around the back for both teams.

I don’t think Villa have ever ‘deserved’ a CL spot, but their floor has been very high the past few years. They rarely get just totally shut down but they rarely just run rampant over anyone. Constantly playing like an 8th place team isn’t that bad when you see some of the collapses Tottenham, Manchester United, West Ham, Everton and Newcastle have had for stretches.

It’s hard to see how suddenly they will run rampant and riot and control territory like a true CL team, Emery doesn’t seem setup to play that way. But who would complain with how he’s done? They have been remarkably consistent and delivered historic moments to the club over the past three seasons, why change now?

Maybe a big talent boost could help, but I think talent boosts and drops don’t quite affect Villa quite as much as they do other teams due to the mental adjustment needed (Tielemans took forever, Elliott couldn’t get it, etc, etc) and how reliant Emery becomes on the players who truly ‘get it’.

Key Players

I talked about Garnacho in a previous article, I really like him to have a big season and think some of his attitude/off the field nonsense has obscured the fact this is a guy with a big-time statistical profile.

Digne leaving opens up minutes for Maatsen to possibly emerge as a key player. He has immense tools, like world class fullback tools, can he put it all together as he climbs into his peak years.

I am a massive John McGinn fan but he can’t keep playing 2K minutes for Villa. The formerly all-action midfielder has seen some serious drop off. Amazing attitude, amazing career, amazing song about him, but he’s no longer an average PL player. His speed is nearly totally gone, he took just 1.2 shots per 90 and had 2.3 touches in the box while having a dribble/dispossession ratio of 29%. 3 seasons ago he dribbled twice as often and had a 50% ratio of dribbles/dispossession with the same shot/assist numbers from a deeper CM role instead of his current RW type.

23/24 touch map.

I do not think Morgan Rogers will be a huge loss in the bedrock of how Villa play (his wild over performance in terms of finishing* will be lost, but that is not a sustainable skill in my mind). Tielemans will probably be a bigger loss, a reminder that in Emery’s complicated system it usually takes a while particularly for midfield players to really click. But when he clicked he takes on a lot of responsibility.

*25 goals and assists from 16.9 expected last year, the year before he had 27 G + A from 18 expected. A total of 52 goal contributions when the expected numbers said ~35. A near 50% over performance.

Manzambi and Gomes are likely the two trying to replace a lot of the Rogers/Tielemans production. The receiving number from ScoutLab is judging him as a AM/Winger while my much less clean and more Excel-y sheet is judging him vs a bit more withdrawn and smaller group of players. I do wonder where exactly he will fit with Villa, he was pretty deep with Freiburg, basically an 8 with some minutes as a true conventional midfielder, but with Switzerland he was playing as a wide forward with no defensive responsibilities. I don’t think that’s his best spot, I hope he is playing midfield and defending and driving play. Here’s what I wrote about him after the Bundesliga season ended:

Johan Manzambi (20 years old) leapt off the page this year. He was a huge attacking presence as an 8, but without the usual efficiency/ball control concerns that often come with young, aggressive goal threats from midfield. A sterling prospect for teams all over the world. .39 xG + xA on plus efficiency and progression with average defensive numbers and an ability to play deeper and more advanced.

Is Joao Gomes good? I admit one of my flaws as a citizen of the world is I really stuggle to track which Portuguese/Brazilian names at Wolves are good and which ones are not. Is Joao Gomes any good? I don’t think so, some awful progression efficiency and receiving numbers over the years for Wolves.

Prediction

The overperformance will drop off and people will point to that and say they miss Rogers especially, but I think Tielemans will be the bigger loss. I think the addition of Garnacho and Manzambi and the promotion of Maatsen and possible emergence of Madjo (6 first half shots vs PSG!) give them a lot of up top punch to replace what is gone and the intricate system rolls on…the average of 7th and 8th place over the past 5 years in the PL is 58.5 so I will go with slightly over 58 points.

Tottenham

SpreadEx Prediction: 61 points, 6th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 40, 13th

Topline Takeaway: A truly rotten attack has spent big and probably will keep spending big. Are the new signings and prospective future signings good enough to snap back to top 6?

Big Changes

First full year of de Zerbi ball, a massive shift in philosophy from the failure of last year started by Thomas Frank.

A ton, ton of cash has been invested in ball-playing central deeper players (Tonali, Mateus Fernandes, van Hecke) and seems like more cash will be spent up front (Savinho, Gakpo, etc).

In de Zerbi’s last full season he had Brighton 3rd in the league in Fields Gained and 2nd in progression efficiency. Spurs were 14th and 17th in those two categories last year. Now that doesn’t mean Brighton were amazing in attack, I criticized their lack of penetration, obsessive flooding of the center of the pitch and inability to attack quickly as almost an obsession with buildup as they settled with a mid-pack 9th most xG.

Almost certainly their best player is gone, replaced by another dominant progression player in van Hecke but Cristian Romero will be greatly missed. A fantastic player and one of the best in the PL his entire time at Spurs.

Summary and Ways Forward

A terrible hire of Thomas Frank, poor talent compilation and awful injury problems mixed together to put together probably the worst ball-playing Big Six side we will ever see. Their fields gained per ball loss number was better than a whopping two teams: West Ham and Wolves, coincidentally the two teams alphabetically behind Spurs as well. This was not some aggressive, transition oriented team like Bournemouth where they deal with low efficiency to convert it into penetration and buildup: Spurs transition activation was atrocious and they were awful at producing there. Frank’s dead ball focus turned out to be the only thing he could do.

Even with a solid dead ball performance only Sunderland, Wolves and Burnley had less xG than Spurs. It’s all about getting the ball into more dangerous areas more often, the weakest other Big Six team was Chelsea 25% above average, Spurs were 15% below average at deep touches. Tonali and Fernandes may have been overpays, but they will be a large upgrade on Bentancur/Palhinha types, De Zerbi may bring other problems but his teams will get out of their own half at a high rate, this should improve but will the attack improve enough?

de Zerbi will have them top half in possession for sure, but will there be transition or final third quality enough to make this a legitimately good attack is very much up in the air. Plenty of de Zerbi teams have looked slick from 80 to 40 yards from goal and then not really wound up with much end product for all that work, that will take some talent.

The Spurs defense was not far off at all from being a good unit. The attack really put pressure on them by being so bad, I would expect this to look a lot better with a more dangerous attack that spends more time in the opponents final third. 6th fewest Fields Gained allowed and a pretty effective press made for some ugly games. The gap between Spurs and a team like Man Utd or a Villa was basically all attacking. That’s what the money and the new manager have to fix. Now can they?

Key Players

I think they overpaid a lot for a good, not amazing, player in Tonali. Talked about it here.

Is Mateus Fernandes another one of those good, not great players?

Even if those two guys are just solid and not world beaters, there should be enough in the backline and midfield to pump those possession numbers up. van Hecke is going to have several 110 completion games for RDZ

and Porro is a top weapon at RB. Senesi, Robertson, etc there are solid bodies here.

But assuming they are good at possessing the ball into the opponents half, who is going to turn it into threats and goals?

Dominic Solanke is already hurt and coming off a brutal season.

One of the returning ‘reliable’ attackers is Mohammed Kudus, who had .25 xG + xA

and a terrible progression connection map last year in 1500 minutes. A solo type player without much end product (.33 xG + xA year before for West Ham) I am very low on him.

Players like Maddison, Simons and Kulusevski would be probably great pieces if healthy, but it’s hard to count on any of them this season truly.

You have the always underrated and solid Richarlison, who has trended toward more of a finisher over the years, and the young and mediocre Mathys Tel. You can see why they have been desperately trying to sign Savinho.

I don’t understand why it’s taking months to get this done and I don’t understand why City are giving him up but it would be arguably the most needed signing of any team in the Premier League this year. I think Savinho is probably a superstar in 3 seasons, an aggressive and talented guy who can play on both wings and do every attacking aspect at a very high level.

Other names are bandied about as well, Cody Gakpo and Nicolas Jackson a couple of them. Usually I am not a get bodies in type guy but I do think Spurs desperately need 2 more ‘good’ attackers at minimum or there is serious risk of a disappointing season. De Zerbi ball without high end talent up top leaves you exposed to counters and sterile possession where the attackers aren’t good enough to break into space or break down opponents.

Prediction

It’s hard to say as of now. Spurs might sign Gakpo, Savinho and Jackson tomorrow and suddenly their attack looks deep and strong. But as of now, even assuming one of those coming in I don’t think the new signings are as good as the price tags and while their possession will go up a lot, I do not think their attack returns to top 6 level. There is just a lot of room to make up and we could see a lot of risky midfield possession without the final third cutting edge needed. Under 61 points.

As always, appreciate the reads, comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoy!

Tier 5: Lower Middle Class

Tier 6: Safety First

10 Players I Am Buying Stock In

10 Players Whose Stock I Am Shorting

Before we continue our romp through the Premier League previews, it might be worth zooming out here for a second to take a look at the big picture of these two teams making up the upper middle class. I think it is an interesting contrast of how these teams got here and the varying challenges and strategies to confronting the Big Six (and Aston Villa I guess).

Brighton are looking for their 7th straight positive xG difference season despite a spend percentile that hasn’t really changed at all, it started down with Newcastle under the 30th percentile and has even dropped a bit over the years. That consistency led me to this stat:

Teams with positive goal differences in each of the past 6 seasons: Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, and Brighton

No Tottenham, no Chelsea, no Man Utd. Brighton! I think that long term consistency is more impressive than Newcastle or Leicester’s single incredible seasons.

Newcastle have edged Brighton on the the xG tables over the past 4 seasons while pushing their spending way up in a seemingly failed attempt to push the barriers of the financial regulations keeping the common man down.

Newcastle’s Saudi money and super-manager centric project vs Brighton’s analytics and player trading model are two ways the ‘other’ teams have used to try and bother the Big Boys. Both have done it at times, and both wind up here in the Upper Middle Class…sort of*.

Newcastle

SpreadEx Prediction: *Was 52 points when I started these articles, now 49 points, 9th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 55, 9th

Secret Sauce is a combination of my xG, deep touches, progression and transition for and against. Grades go from 2 (Burnley) to 97 (Arsenal) with 50 being Fulham averaging 50% of everything.

Topline Takeaway: A near blank slate, massive change, and a fulcrum season for a team teetering right in the middle of the Premier League.

Big Changes

Yes. Yes to all big changes. Eddie Howe came back for a few weeks, looked absolutely drained and resigned. Matthias Jaissle is in from Saudi Arabia (and somehow cost 12 million apparently). Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali, Kieran Trippier, and Bruno Guimaraes are gone with Lewis Hall possibly wavering. A bunch of teenagers are in on 30-50 million fees and probably many more players to come. Almost certainly the most change of any non promoted team in the league.

Summary and Ways Forward

The Eddie Howe era had kind of run out of steam last season, the transition defense totally collapsed as teams just pushed through Newcastle’s defense way too easily. The attack was just average all around as Newcastle have never really developed a strong ball control attack. More on that here.

Several of the big money signings from last summers splurge using the Isak money look (and looked very early on and maybe at the time) like bench players at best: Elanga and Woltemade are highly paid, high fee attackers who have enormous weaknesses and minor strengths at best.

The big question is what is the way forward. The future is so wide open. Tonali and Gordon were both solid to good players who I think getting huge fees for was probably good business, but Bruno was the absolute heartbeat of the team. Without those three and without the manager there is very little above average to count on, it’s all going to be brand new.

Is the team going to try and possess the ball up the pitch? Is it going to be a front-foot pressing side? Are they going to pack midfield with ball winners like Bamba and Joelinton or maybe more ball dominant type players like Ramsey and Steur? Two forwards together up top or classic wingers? Is there going to be total buy in and fresh energy from the squad or do we get a sort of a sinking ship or way station type vibe where players like Lewis Hall are looking elsewhere? Where does the future of payroll/spend lie? The future lies wide open from established top half side competing for Europe spending remaining 7th-8th to spending dipping a bit back towards the massed middle and Newcastle drifting back towards an Everton/West Ham type? It’s a fulcrum type season for Newcastle that they are coming into with as much of a clean slate as any team of their size has done in a long time.

One thing that really does not fill me with confidence is this:

Assuming the reporting is correct (a big step), how are these two players in the ‘we need to get one of them category’

Hojbjerg, an analytical darling with elite progression numbers for years and years now, vs Joao Palhinha one of the worst midfielders at building up out there. It’s almost like asking what are you going to do to workout today and you are going to decide either max deadlift or jog 9 miles. And you are going to the grocery store for next weeks meals and are either going to get a lot of chicken, rice and brussels sprouts or like 7 boxes of Lucky Charms and some Doritos. Just those two things are working at very different purposes and seeing them on the same list is not confidence inducing that the plan is a master on.

It’s a show us what you have summer from Newcastle. You have money, an open roster and a new coach. Expectations are not to make Champions League but the right energy and right direction of travel through this season will be crucial.

Key Players

Some eye popping numbers from the French league for new 40 million signing in midfield Aladji Bamba, but a few ones that give me serious pause. One is this is just 815 minutes, the second is a really low receiving number and then his serious underperformance on expected passing and below average fields gained per incompletion. I suspect his ball winning will port over reasonably but ball winning destroyer types do not earn starting roles on Premier League ever-present teams. Joelinton added in elite end product to become a key player, Bamba had 0 open play xG and 0 deep receptions in France.

It’s a lot of money for a player with serious strengths but serious error bars and a good bit needed development. It doesn’t feel like he will be a clear plus for a team that wants to be an average Premier League side for a while. Maybe if he’s surrounded by progression and end product, but right now dropping him into such a chaotic side lacking major stalwarts is not ideal.

Sean Steur comes with big progression numbers but a very slight frame and a very soft league. Offensive stats from Netherlands go a bit into the bucket of corporate super hero movie critic ratings and miles from last oil change as numbers I put minimum stock in.

There will almost certainly be several more midfield additions, which kind of makes spending 60 million on a couple of prospects I would be surprised add a lot this year a bit of a head scratcher. I am hoping to be surprised, I am not saying they won’t be good players in a few years, I would be surprised if they are now.

The biggest signing so far is the 50 million Gordon replacement on the left from Hoffenheim.

No real weaknesses in his Bundesliga stat card and he does bring absolutely blistering pace and a physical profile to dream on: he is quick and can really jump despite the small frame. The production in Germany was pretty good but didn’t jump off the page, if he could hang as an average PL winger this season you’d be quite happy.

So if Woltemade and Elanga are kind of anchors, you have these 3 new teenagers you can’t expect top half production from, you have Willock and a fading Joelinton and a still-raw and 2nd percentile receiver in Will Osula where are you going to get production in attack from?

I wrote about how I love Harvey Barnes’s career and production here

One thing that has tended to annoy me over the years with Newcastle is they often have enormous squad holes (Dan Burn somehow playing fullback for years, this years huge gaps in the center of the pitch) and always have some big money guy alongside Barnes on the left and two good players fighting for minutes. Gordon for years and now Toure. Barnes has started just 43 of his 91 Newcastle appearances. He probably shold have been a 80%+ starter.

So put down left wing for good stuff, you need more.

I think you need two guys with big price tags, interesting profiles and who did not make huge impacts in their first year to step up.

Yoane Wissa is my pick for a big step forward. Last year he was an expensive panic buy and then in play he got hurt immediately (on international duty) never looked fully fit, looked lost and frustrated, got benched and ended the season with 1 G, 1 A in the PL. But he has a long track record of growing production in the PL and under the hood his numbers were sneakily quite good. He is back, looks in much better physical shape this preseason and looks mentally engaged after a good World Cup. It was not smart to buy a guy who is about to turn 30 for so much money and it’s unclear how much Newcastle will get the ball into great positions for him but I am putting my chips in on Wissa having a good season with what he gets.

Another player who was in and out of the team, in and out of having great performances and really has sort of flickered on and off his entire career is Jacob Ramsey. As a receiver in midfield he is elite but he has never quite coupled that with end product or elite progression leaving his game feeling a bit ‘what-if’. Even his creation numbers have often reflected a guy moving the ball into good positions but not amazing positions and you’d think there would be more end product from the positions he gets into. I don’t really see any reason why this should be the case, can Jacob Ramsey make his game more well rounded and translate these great positions and progressions into something a bit more concrete? Newcastle as currently constructed probably need him to to have a good season.

It’s almost hard to understand his grouping of stats really. How is he so high on deep progressions and so low on xThreat created. How is he so high on final product and receiving and creation and progression and so low on total VAEP, etc, etc. A bit of a mystery player heading into his 25 year old season.

I wrote elsewhere about my worry about Dan Burn and Nick Woltemade’s limitations.

I already wrote plenty about Woltemade, just to add his first 107 preseason minutes here: 0 shots, 0 key passes and 1 box touch.

Prediction

I feel it’s almost a bit early to make a prediction, and that is what makes this season so exciting in a way. More players will come in, the error bars on players like Toure, Steur and Bamba will shrink, the new manager will reveal his tendencies and crucial players like Wissa and Ramsey will reveal if they are taking a step forward, the young talented fullbacks will see if they can carry a larger load and we will know much more. It’s nearly a blank slate so I tend to just side with the market. 49 points sounds about right but with an wide range of outcomes, maybe tilted a bit one lower side.

Brighton

SpreadEx Prediction: 53 points, 8th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 55, 9th

Topline Takeaway: A team with the engine of a high press and ball control to contend with the CL, can they get the fine-tuning right?

Big Changes

Welbeck has gone to Chelsea, leaving the CF position wide open.

Van Hecke, one of the league’s great ball progressors, is off to Spurs replaced by Pascal Struijk.

Of course they have bought a 19 year old winger from Sweden for 20 million who has played 580 top flight minutes. When he starts getting minutes in the spring and popping on models no one should be surprised.

Summary and Ways Forward

Brighton controlled the middle of the pitch like a Champions League team. The 4th most progression in the league as they played through the center over and over and a ferocious high press (in some ways hardest and highest in the league) limited opponents to 3rd fewest deep touches in the league are numbers you’d associate with a pretty comfortable CL spot or deservedly in a close battle for one.

But as we say in American football, the ‘special teams’ were not special.

-Only Burnley were worse at getting into transition

-only Newcastle allowed more transition against

-only Chelsea had worse xG per set piece taken.

One lesson analytics can tell you is no matter how good you are at holding the ball and pushing opponents deep into a settled shell, it’s pretty hard to break them down in open play. The best way of doing it is probably elite small space attackers who can all get good shots, Brighton didn’t really have that. A monster in air who can head balls in and down is another, and nope also. The lack of those, transition and dead ball production is how Brighton wound up with 375 more Fields Gained (40% more) than Leeds and a similar xG.

Now I think the ability to control the ball gives you a much higher ceiling in terms of attacking if you can figure some of these things out. Why can’t their dead ball delivery get better? They have a truly elite header of the ball in Vuskovic now, maybe a few better schemes and all it takes is a bit above league average production and that’s 3-4 goals. Add the same amount in transition improvements (maybe Welbeck’s willingness to drop deep and van Hecke’s ball dominance and safety first approach combined to sort of limit transitional attacks?) and suddenly this attack looks a lot more like Liverpool, United, Chelsea and Arsenal than Leeds, Villa, and Newcastle.

Is there something deep inside a team like Brighton that might want to lose the Conference League playoff and just not worry about that competition? I guess it’s nice and I try not to be too much of a data nerd and dismiss ‘little cups’ but man. A selection of opponents PL teams have played in the Conference League:

Shamrock Rovers

Silkeborg (Denmark)

Zrinjski Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

FC Noah (Armenia)

Shelbourne (Ireland)

KuPS Kuopio (Finland)

AEK Larnaca a bunch of times, Legia Warsaw a bunch of times. When Chelsea were in it Marc Guiu, Christopher Nkunku, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Joao Felix and Mykhailo Mudryk were their star players in the competition. Chelsea legends all of them. Really PL teams should not be in this competition at all.

Key Players

Luka Vuskovic is in after an exciting season in Germany

Some absolutely elite numbers in Hamburg, maybe Brighton figured they can coach up (or provide better options for) his passing game. Because progression wise he was 180 degrees from van Hecke.

Winning duels is what he is meant to do. 75% aerial duel win rate in Hamburg is wild.

Passing accuracy, not so much.

Vuskovic was 28/29 passing for Brighton in the opening friendly vs Roma, for what it’s worth.

I do love Oliver Boscagli’s progression ability, which he showed off during his CL campaign with PSV a few years ago. He was elite at creating but surprisingly inefficient last year in the PL.

Read here for my long term love of Pascal Groß

And long term doubt of Carlos Baleba

Yankuba Minteh is an all time dribble over pass attacker.

Jack Hinshelwood didn’t let a total lack of progression ability mean he got discarded from midfield play. He has developed serious final product and box crashing. Alongside Carlos Baleba and Yasin Ayari that risks a totally dysfunctional midfield in terms of ball progression but alongside a true legend of ball progression like Pascal Gross he can add something to the game.

The big question is who is going to score goals. Welbeck had nearly twice as many xG/90 as any other player who topped 310 minutes on the season and they let him go to Chelsea for cheap. Maybe that indicates total belief in Charalampos Kostoulas? His minimal time on the pitch last year (309 minutes in PL, oddly 1 minute below the cutoff a couple sentences ago!) did show the serious promise that led Brighton to buy him at 18 years old for a 35 million fee. In 532 total minutes including the cups he had .45 xG, .11 xA and 4.2 shots per 90, reasonably solid minutes for a teen in his first high level league.

The other forward options seem to be Evan Ferguson (who was ~ok at Roma and doesn’t seem to be loved by Hurzeler) and Georginio Rutter, who seems a bit of a tweener type without a serious nose for goal (.12 open play xG last year and .17 the year before). Whoever can lead the line and get Brighton into transition more will be a huge figure, I think Kostoulas is first on that list and Ferguson second.

Prediction

I think there is a sneaky high ceiling here, the ball control and high press are already at elite or near elite levels and some of the big problems seem relatively easily fixable: set piece struggles for one. I like a lot of the young players: Minteh, Vuskovic and Kostoulas seem like players who can develop into true difference makers. A main worry is can Pascal Groß keep putting up elite progression numbers as he reaches 35? He was a difference maker last season and without him the center of midfield looks really light on progression. If he keeps his legs I like this team to go Over 53 points and be a decent shout for CL contention.

As always, appreciate the reads, comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoy!

After the aside to talk Eddie Howe and Arsenal, we are back to the Premier League previews. Moving past the group that just sees a comfortable survival as a decent goal, we get onto more solid ground. Teams who might be looking more towards the upper half as a good goal, at least according to the market. Nottingham Forest, Brentford, Bournemouth and Everton take up positions 13 through 10 on SpreadEx’s preseason market.

Lots of the player data and images is coming from ScoutLab. The rest often comes from my metrics, glossary here.

2 other preseason pieces:

10 Players I Am Buying

10 Players I Am Shorting

Nottingham Forest

SpreadEx Prediction: 48 points, 13th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 34, 15th

Secret Sauce is a combination of my xG, deep touches, progression and transition for and against. Grades go from 2 (Burnley) to 97 (Arsenal) with 50 being Fulham averaging 50% of everything.

Topline Takeaway: Glasner is in looking to solidify a very shaky defense, stabilize the team in the lower-middle class and raise a floor that was worryingly low last year.

Big Changes

Out goes Elliot Anderson for $160 million and they haven’t really started spending to replace him yet, usually Forest suddenly splurge on like 7 players so it’s hard to really preview them knowing that bonanza is likely on the horizon. Oliver Glasner is in as the new manager, bringing with him almost certainly his super effective defensive shell that makes everything opponents do slow and inefficient in the final third and an attack that can be an afterthought at times.

Summary and Ways Forward

Against the ball, Forest were particularly soft in crucial areas. They allowed one of the highest progression efficiencies, one of the highest deep touch success rates and let opponents get going in transition a lot. All 3 of those together is rare and a bad sign. Teams in the highest quarter in all 3 stats: Nottingham Forest and Burnley. Bad neighbor!

They were pretty lucky to allow only 51 goals, being really reliant on blocking shots (highest rate in the league!) is not a true solution on its own to getting clear of relegation worries. The underlying -3 GD looks pretty close to average but I don’t really buy it, this was a pretty bad team last year even with Elliot Anderson playing basically every minute and having an absurd share of the teams progression. They had 49% of the goals in their matches, but just 44% of the progression and deep touches and 42% of the transition. Those latter numbers are more of where I have them.

When they started last year with Ange in charge and MGW and Anderson running the show from the midfield with all that money spent on attacking wingers, you had the impression this was a very ambitious thinking type of team that wants to have the ball, push forward and control territory. They wanted to play like Brighton do in their good seasons, one might think. No more Nuno-Ball, into ‘a veritable age of reason, like the one they had in France’

But like Ulysses Everett McGill, Delmar and Pete (the best Odyssey movie still by the way), the best laid plans can go awry. Ange was gone in a blink, Sean Dyche came in and now Glasner is in, neither one of the latter will be associated with progressive possession any time soon. I think this is not really an ambitious competing for Europe every year type of appointment, more of a ‘we want to become Crystal Palace or Fulham’ level team for a couple years at least. Not a bad goal really, just different. You can win the Conference League, Europa League or a Cup being the 11th-14th best team in England.

I think plugging the transitional defense is problem #1 he wants to solve. If they progress a little less, who cares, transition and dead ball can make up for it. But Forest will not allow relegation level transition production against this year I can almost guarantee.

Key Players

Getting up the pitch was basically go find MGW.

He can finish, progress, create final product and receive the ball well, but arguably not so well that Champions League teams will think they have to have him and make him the center-piece of the summer. I presume he probably will eventually move up, but it’s kind of a nice middle ground for Forest. Not quie the Tarky/Undav/Pascal Groß range, maybe like the Antonee Robinson/Christian Norgaard range where you can become just an absolute legend for a lower half club while being rumored to leave but never quite leaving for a while?

The direct Elliot Anderson replacement had a solid season at Leipzig. A high energy, high action, gritty and active defender he isn’t going to reach all those green bars in England but he won’t be a problem spot.

What wingers will fit in here? CHO, Hutchinson, Bakwa and Ndoye had less than .3 xG + xA, Kalimuendo got shipped out on loan to Frankfurt, and McAtee couldn’t get minutes amongst that crew. There are precious few standout statistics from this group of wingers and forwards, particularly in receiving and final product. Plenty of weaknesses for a group that cost over $220 million for 6 of them last year in an insane spending spree.

One guy I like to emerge is Taiwo Awoniyi. A guy who feasts on running in behind and was actually quite good (.67 xG/90) in very limited minutes last year, if his body holds up I like him to re-emerge as a starter.

I know he is highly regarded and I know the fans love him but I feel about Murillo a lot like how I feel about van de Ven, in that if you are a CB who is such a massive risk aerially you better really really make up for it in progression. I don’t think he does and that always leaves you worrying a bit they can isolate and bully the 180 cm CB who wins just 51% of his aerials.

Prediction

Glasner has them more solid against the break and the defense performs under the hood more like a regular, about average defense. Attack wise there is enough in transition and dead balls to make this prediction right on the money. 48 points sounds just right.

Brentford

SpreadEx Prediction: 49 points, t-12th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 38, 14th

Topline Takeaway: Marginal Gains FC continue to run up big edges in several categories, now add a new exciting ingredient in what could be an elite midfielder.

Big Changes

A big name with big hype in Mamadou Sangare has transferred to Brentford for 48 million euros. He helped push Lens to 2nd in the table (mentioned in the Palace section that they earned it). Callum Wilson and Jaidon Antony are in for attacking depth and a center back from Salin zfor the injured Sepp van den Burg.

Summary and Ways Forward

This was an attack that outshot only Burnley, Sunderland and Wolves but man they really do the details and the margins right to turn that into league average xG.

-Elite dead ball production after promoting a set piece coach to head coach does make a bit of sense, they had the best per dead ball production in the league.

-Solid transition activation, higher quality shots come in transition

-direct play around the opponents danger zone, the lowest Gray Wall in the league means a high% of touches are in the Danger Zone vs in the Gray Zone just outside

-Only 23% of shots got blocked, 1st percentile vs a league average of 29%.

-Their xG/shot was best in the league at .125, vs a league average of .109.

Can they keep these last two absurd heights up? Because when I see that I suspect serious regression to like 6th in both even if you are good, but then you look at the last 3 years

And…hmm. Not sure exactly what they are doing but it has led to extreme results here for 3 seasons running. They do have one of the slower shot triggers for a low field tilt, low possession team and obviously look to disregard settled, final third possession and have for a long time. They play vertically (especially so on regains), rarely try to carry the ball, and use the wings a ton. Not sure if all that adds up to how they get good shot after good shot with a very low total spend number but there are clear Brentford fingerprints everywhere, you just have to know where to look.

A classic Brentford defensive fingerprint is the heavy high pressure and then fall back and protect the box totally. Brentford are broadly on both sides of the ball unconcerned with progression through the soggy middle of the pitch where 10 yards either way doesn’t change goal odds that much. Defensively they want to win it high and get a chance or get bodies back to protect that danger zone: only Arsenal allowed a lower deep touch success rate than Brentford.

This clustering map from 23/24 tells a nice story of how they do it, when you are in settled possession they give you circulation and possession but not easy danger zone access.

Is this sort of huge floor raising style constantly sustainable? Brentford can coach un finding good and hard to block shots and danger zone defense without totally caving in and losing full control of matches? If it hadn’t happened so many years in a row you would think it’s a bit of a shaky foundation (44-45% deep touch ratio and usually a bit lower Fields Gained ratio) but they’ve proven to be much closer to a 50% team and keep finding good attackers.

Key Players

For seemingly decades it was Norgaard, Jensen and Janelt no matter who Brentford brought in to challenge for time. No longer, it’s Sangare’s time now. I know very little about him other than Lens were great, his stats are great and he just went for $33 in our dynasty league’s auction with the successful manager who won him calling him the next Elliot Anderson. He looks well rounded in the numbers.

Deep in the windowless mines I imagine Brentford’s glass-clad team of analysts who have zero tan, zero upper body muscle and reference Fields Gained per Ball Loss but can’t run 200 meters without gasping for air there is a closely guarded formula where they know they can get severely undervalued young players who are prematurely balding. First Mbeumo and now Damsgaard.

The longer they stay in the PL the better attackers they can afford. Dango Ouattara is a high end output winger heading into his age 24 season.

I know he’s injured but he’s my kind of CB. I just think being able to win aerial duels with even passable in possession skills (here safe but clean passing and a threat on set pieces) gives your team a lot more safety and your personal ceiling is so much higher. It’s hard to develop aerial duel ability, not quite as hard to add some punch to your progression game,

Prediction

I mean at this point it’s a trend right? Brentford will seemingly return everyone and add their biggest transfer arguably ever from a team who was pretty close under the hood to what they are projected for this year. Even if you (probably rightly) say just give them very good, not super elite, shot quality, box defense and ability to get unblocked shots I think Sangare and the settling in and progression of Ouattara can make up for that. 49 points seems about right.

Bournemouth

SpreadEx Prediction: 49 points, t-12th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 66, 7th

Topline Takeaway: A team with more talent and a better underlying performance engine than all the other teams in this group by far. Can they cope with Europe and a new manager of unknown quality and likely a changing style?

Big Changes

Europa League comes to the south coast. It comes to 11,300 seat stadium that I used to post screenshots of local gutter and carpet cleaners ads when they first came up and will now be probably hosting a European semifinal.

The all-action and effective Andoni Iraola is gone to Liverpool and Marco Rose is in, a move I am not fully sure about. In one of his last ‘good’ seasons at Leipzig, Rose’s team were a much more ‘normal’ defense than Iraola’s all-out high tempo style. Only 4 teams (Arsenal, City, Liverpool, Brighton) allowed lower progression efficiency and only Newcastle, Liverpool and Arsenal allowed lower buildup completion% than Iraola’s Bournemouth. They forced opponents into by far the most vertical passes and you can see how strong they were above in stopping settled attacks and how transition-heavy a game that created.

Rose at Leipzig was basically middle of the pack in forcing verticality and below middle of the pack in buildup completion% allowed, far from the All The Way To 11 Iraola approach. Iraola was able to basically force opponents to look a lot like Bournemouth, look at those attacking and defending funnel graphics and the transition/directness graphic, both Bournemouth and their opponents look almost identical. He was very much able to impose his style of game. I don’t know if Rose will. It will be fascinating to follow.

Summary and Ways Forward

Bournemouth were a legit very good team last year. Secret Sauce of 66 was good for 7th in the league, they earned European competition without a doubt.

No matter who the manager is, Bournemouth need to be and should be better defending dead balls. They basically shipped 4 goals more than average on season on dead balls, one of worst in the league.

The bigger question is can Rose generate another strong attack. Bournemouth took more shots than Chelsea and nearly as many as Arsenal despite having the lowest buildup completion% in the league. So many attacks were keyed in transition and after high ball wins, as the defense changes the attack will change. Bournemouth games you can see above had so much in transition and so little in settled possession.

More regular passing patterns and ball progression will be required to make up for the presumed drop in high takeaways.

Key Players

Is Alex Scott an elite midfielder? It doesn’t really look like it in the data but big teams act like he is at least close. This year should tell us more, the first outside of the Iraola counting-stat multiplying system that has been so good for fantasy and likely for lighting up players dashboards with shots and tackles as the ball races up and down the pitch. The progression and pass accuracy metrics are a bit worrying to me, especially without top-end creation or final product. Plenty of Bournemouth players go near the top of lots of buildup/action metrics and Scott isn’t one of those.

No big signs of major progression like we saw with Wharton. I have an open mind we might see it this year.

One of those guys who just lights up essentially any attacking metric you can devise is Ryan Christie. He has fought injuries a bit the past two seasons, and has missed about half of the last 45 games with 4 separate injuries. He is now 31 and has those injury flags but his on-field performance remains elite and underrated. I hope he still has the health and speed to return to a starting role.

The big money players interesting teams across Europe were Kroupi (serious injury knocked him off) and the 19 year old Rayan. Rightfully so, at first glance.

But it’s possible that Christie and Brooks being healthy enough to start 25+ games will be what keeps the Bournemouth momentum going. I argued they might not really be that much worse off (if at all) if Brooks could play all of Semenyo’s minutes. Of course his health problems (recovered from cancer amazingly) mean he probably will never come close to elite fitness levels of Semenyo so it’s kind of a moot point. But Brooks and Christie, per-minute, are elite PL players.

Neither one played in todays friendly due to ‘fatigue’ so not off to the best start backing up this hype. It mostly shows the quality of talent Bournemouth have. That we have to argue about if the guy who started for Brazil in the World Cup is anywhere from 1st to 5th best attacker they’ve had recently. Bournemouth.

Alvaro Rodriguez is a new striker, a mid-level buy. The 21 year old from Elche had more impressive numbers than Evanilson did basically across the board. I see most betting markets still expect Evanilson to lead the line, I am not so sure. As a close Evanilson watcher for several years due to owning him in a dynasty Fantasy league I think there is plenty of room to improve for Bournemouth. Or Rose could use both together like he did at Leipzig, but that feels not really robust pressing and progression wise for the PL.

One interesting signing that does signify maybe a different style of play is Antonio Silva, a center back from Benfica for $34 million. An incredibly classy in possession passer, his main comps are van Hecke and Tapsoba. Not James Hill (5th percentile pass accuracy).

RB Adam Smith (3rd percentile progression and 18th percentile accuracy) might be replaced by another new signing in Juanlu from Sevilla (53/89).

The direction of travel for Bournemouth is away from reckless tempo and more towards a typical, “good” progression team.

Some really nice under the radar pretty cheap signings who have quality numbers against good competition on just average teams.

Prediction

To be ranked behind Everton is kind of an insult to be honest. Bournemouth overall have acquired a good bit of talent, we didn’t even get into Amine Adli or the somehow ever present Tavernier and Kluivert. That’s certainly one of the Golden Rules of Bournemouth, no matter how exciting you find Christie or Brooks or Adli or Enes Unal or Gannon-Doak or Kroupi or Rayan or Alvaro or whoever, at the end of the day you look up and Tavernier and Kluivert have racked up 3800 minutes again.

Anyway, that was a digression. Bournemouth have depth and talent but are likely to be dealing with fatigue from Europe and a serious shift from one of the more unique and entertaining styles in Europe to a ‘good’ team style. Can Alex Scott be the beating heart of a standard good PL Europa League team? I am not really sure, if he’s as good as Chelsea think and Marco Rose is a standard decent coach I certainly like Bournemouth to be the best of all the teams profiled in the first two pieces here and very competitive with Villa/Brighton/Newcastle as well. I like slightly over 49 and don’t think they belong in this group.

Everton

SpreadEx Prediction: 49.5 points, 10th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 25, 16th

Topline Takeaway: A team who needs a lot more urgency in fixing their serious underlying ills. Not sure what gives market confidence that they are a 50 point team, I just don’t see it.

Big Changes

Idrissa Gueye is gone with Hayden Hackney and Christian Norgaard in to replace him in central midfield. Grealish is maybe gone (though maybe back a year older with a foot injury in his rearview) and no new attacking options have joined.

Summary and Ways Forward

Most bad offensive teams that hit long balls and struggle to build pressure through progression (Everton were 17th in possession ahead of only the relegated teams) at least have a low Gray Wall number. This means they at least burst into the box quickly when attacking, often because it’s low numbers on either side and there is no need for side to side ball circulation looking for an entry.

Gray Wall meaning how many touches you take in gray area vs orange area.

Not so for Everton: only Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and Burnley had bigger Gray Walls against them. That just highlights how ineffective the Everton attack was, even with a half season of turning back the clock Jack Grealish carrying the attack. This was a team that was legit really bad. Not quite relegation bad but bad enough to get relegated if that makes sense. Only the relegated teams had a lower share of progression and only relegated + Sunderland had a lower share of deep completions or shots.

They were just bad at every aspect of the game except in the box they made opponents work long into possessions to get shots off and held them to pretty tough shots. But that’s sort of a small gift when you are really easy to hold possession against and quite easy to win possession back against.

How will this get better? You can say the midfield is a bit better at progressing but losing Grealish and still yet to replace the awful in possession fullbacks means this team still has tons of questions marks for me.

Even with reinforcement I think late stage Moyes is happy enough staying organized, keeping the midfielders and fullbacks back and letting a few attackers try to handle long balls and get the attacking done. With how bad Everton were last year this is just inviting risk in. I am not quite sure why they are projected 10th in the league.

Key Players

After a year off (Arsenal took one of Brentford’s best players to play Carabao Cup and not even make squad for real matches), Norgaard returns at 32 years old to high stakes action. I’ve always liked him for his recovery rate and ability to do a bit of everything: he can win aerials, get involved with buildup, take some shots, win the ball back, etc. We haven’t seen him in a long time and he’s pretty old but this is a really good move I think from Everton.

I think they need him back. The second line players VAEP/final product/creation (average of 3) percentiles:

Grealish 89/63/85 (79)

Dewsbury-Hall 52/48/62 (54)

Ndiaye 50/35/48 (44)

Alcaraz 37/22/9 (23)

McNeil 29/10/16 (18)

and Dibling couldn’t even get minutes in that group. That’s a huge falloff for a team lacking forwards who

I do like Tarky and Beto as good old-school sort of lower-table battler type players and wrote about them a few weeks ago.

This is why Everton needed not just a Gueye replacement but a midfield improvement. I assume Hackney will be that, they need it.

Prediction

I don’t really see what the market sees here. Last year they were a bottom quarter team with no way to hold the ball and no aspect of decent attacking. Their attacking options look worse without Grealish, the fullback problem is still glaring and the midfield upgrades are there but not sure leaps. I don’t see a reason to think they will be improved, much less much improved. Strong under 49.5, it’s a team drifting toward serious danger. Everton and West Ham have financial advantages over the Brentford’s and BRighton’s of the world but have been run poorly and are on verge of wasting away.

As always, appreciate the reads, comments and criticisms. Hope you enjoy!

Eddie Howe has left Newcastle after just over 4.5 years as manager. He took over with Newcastle in 19th in the table and a total mess and leaves with the 5th most PL points over 179 matches as Newcastle boss. It was a fascinating time to be Newcastle boss as they rose from the depths backed by Saudi money, looked to challenge the Big Boys and now seem to have faded back from that challenge if it was ever truly possible. Howe raised Newcastle’s floor and delivered one of the greatest seasons in Premier League history. His behavior, player development, structured pressing and ability to generate emotionally packed moments were exceptional. But his inability to ever get Newcastle controlling matches, some player evaluation whiffs and the widening cracks in transition defense ultimately showed Howe to not be a miracle worker able to push Newcastle into the top tier of the league.

The Big Picture

Spend percentile here is an average of previous three years net spend plus payroll found on capology. Is it rigorous? No. Is it totally accurate? No. Is it about as good as we can get? Probably.

Newcastle’s spending never really took off like the early breathless reporting and reaction suggested it would. Their payroll went from 12th to 8th and while they did start spending a lot on transfers, the new regulations really limited them from gate crashing the Big Six or really even getting to the gate. Some* would say those regulations did their job. With Saudi Arabia at one point wanting to push Newcastle into the top tier of the league, they never got their spend number above the 72nd percentile and by Howe’s final season it was just the 58th percentile, basically where it was at the start of his tenure in the 21/22 season.

*including me

Model Personal Behavior

In a world where so many managers berate referees, attack them in the press, complain about not having enough money, not having good enough players, Eddie Howe was a relative picture of class. He whined and cajoled of course but rarely if ever did we see the vein-popping out of control screaming and borderline inhuman treatment of officials that is so tiresome.

Rarely did we ever hear players thrown under the bus, complaints about transfers or even too many complaints about a historic injury crisis in 23/24. We usually heard him talk calmly about improving players, working hard, sticking to the process and performing minute after minute. Refreshing and focused on what he can control, he made you want to root for him. He was a resilient and consistent coach and had some perspective of what he could control and how to treat people.

Quality Player Development

Alexander Isak took off in his final two seasons at Newcastle to look like one of the best forwards in the world. A great receiver, who could pass a bit, run in behind, and put up elite production. But he hadn’t always looked so great, his career average at Real Sociedad was .53 G + A per 90. That went up 36% to .72 at Newcastle

Callum Wilson was a solid, .5 G + A striker at Bournemouth (also under Howe) but suddenly spiked in ‘22-’24 at Newcastle to look like Erling Haaland numbers wise.

He outperformed his expected numbers those two seasons for a total of .88 G + A per 90 (minus PKs) over2800 minutes. That’s only .07 off Haaland’s career PL average.

The 20/21 season Jacob Murphy had .21 xG + xA. He got to .25 in the first year with Howe, basically a 30th percentile output winger, then suddenly he was a top end attacking winger for 3 seasons with npxG + opxA above the 80th percentile.

Joelinton was a forlorn forward at .25 xG, .05 xA and making no impact up front for Newcastle. Under Howe he moved into midfield and his VAEP rocketed up. His output basically stayed the same but he became a wrecking ball in midfield and allowed much better strikers like Callum Wilson and Alexander Isak to slide into the lineup.

Miguel Almiron went from .15 xG + xA in 2020-22 to .35 over the next two seasons

Kieran Trippier was thought to be washed up by Tottenham when they shipped him off to Spain, Newcastle and Howe brought him back and he was probably one of the best 25 players in the league over the next 2.5 seasons.

Fabian Schär, Valentino Livramento, Lewis Hall, Lewis Miley and many more could be used as examples here of the patience and ability to get guys to ‘click’ that is not that widespread at the top level.

Joelinton and Jacob Murphy are players who many managers expecting to make the CL would have simply replaced or complained about. Eddie Howe made them key members of a top level team.

Huge Highs

The 22/23 season was simply outrageous, one of the great seasons relative to spend we have or will ever see

Newcastle have had the highest spending of any of these teams, to be fair, but Aston Villa, West Ham, Everton and Nottingham Forest have had spends within shouting distance of Newcastle and none of those teams made this list.

During the 23/24 season, in the first home CL match in 20 years, you got some more repeated and individual emotional and passionate highs, usually cued by a high press in front of the St. James crowd:

The run to the Carabao Cup title that included two solid and deserved wins over Arsenal in the semis and Liverpool at Wembley was another big high. Both with great pressing and direct, quick attacking play

Amazing moments but sharp eyed readers will note the fact they completed 64 and 63% of passes in their big wins as something that might not be totally sustainable for a top level team with ideas of being a steady top 5 side.

Some managers can be a bit bloodless, a bit too detached and analytical and can’t inspire players to frenzied moments. Arsene Wenger, Lucien Favre, Arne Slot, Eric ten Hag, Graham Potter all seem like they fit this category. Some of them are good or great coaches but could never get Newcastle playing like they did for some of those big nights that Howe did. He has the ability to emotionally fire players up and reach great heights.

The Numbers and Trends: Stuck Between Stations?

Newcastle climbed out of the depths and reached that huge peak in 22/23 but then settled into a kind of Europa League level performance over the three years since then. They made the CL once, they crashed to 12th once, but overall were just a kind of 5th-8th place level team in total over 3 seasons. Why couldn’t the progression have continued or the level remained where it was in 22/23?

The investment/spend couldn’t keep climbing.

We saw that above. But in the trenches on the pitch, Newcastle got caught between two identities and sort of stuck.

Howe’s Newcastle seemed to be split more and more between being a high-pressing, bombs away team powered by emotion and the roaring St. James crowd and a team that acted like they wanted to control games through possession. Over his final years they lost a bit of that directness and full-throttle style without ever gaining enough final third possession to make it worthwhile.

Tough to repeat the 2022/23 season

The 52% possession and elite xG share combination in 22/23 relied on an insane defense holding opponents to just 10.1 shots per match and a super-direct attack getting shots off at the most rapid pace in the league. Only 2 other teams over the past 10 years allowed fewer shots with a sub-55% possession, Brighton and Leicester in 2020-21. Of 8 teams who allowed under 11 shots and had under 55% possession, the average shot increase was +2.1 to the next year. So it wasn’t shocking Newcastle went from 10.1 to 13.7 shots allowed. The larger problem was how opponents got those shots (coming below).

They could never increase field tilt and progression efficiency to elite levels

The progression efficiency (Fields Gained Per Ball Loss) never got above 8th in the PL, teams like Brighton and Fulham and Villa have finished ahead of them there. It’s harder to totally control games the lower you go down that particular stat. Newcastle could not pin decent teams back, the progression was not high quality enough to do so.

The solidity of the defense faded as the scouting report came out

More live ball turnovers from reckless possession meant more openness to quick attacks as teams realized that was a chink in the armor.

In 22/23 I wrote

Probably the best defense in the league, fueled by intensity and running. Watching Newcastle last year was a true delight…the kind of season that comes along just once in a very long time.

There was a high press that was as fierce as any in the league, but opponents struggled to penetrate the danger zone once they worked past the press, and if they did get to the danger zone it was then very hard to convert that into shots or xG.

But then the next season I was singing a different tune:

Newcastle pressed high and well when in structured situations but were very susceptible to getting got in transition.

Defensively Newcastle were incredibly open and weak right after losing the ball…

Then in the midst of the ugly spring this last season, those notes were all you could hear:

Newcastle have collapsed transitionally. Over the last 8 matches they are nearly dead last and have just 26% of the transition production in their matches.

Newcastle tried pressing more and were always very effective in certain situations: last year no team forced opponents into lower buildup completion%.

I wrote before last year and it remained true always:

When Eddie Howe can trigger a press, he triggers a ferocious press that is hard to break down.

But once the book got out to go quick at them, there were often transitional leaks.

The transitional attack became more and more conservative over time

In 22/23 Newcastle were the best team in the league at generating shots per pass, by 25/26 they had faded to below average.

Liverpool under Klopp were never quite Man City tidy in possession but were relentless at firing balls forward when they won it back in open play. This chart is from April 2024 but indicates the gestalt philosophy of Klopp’s Liverpool. And you can see Newcastle, playing the 5th least vertical passes after regains. Only de Zerbi, Arteta, Pep and Kompany had their teams playing more conservatively.

By the final season, Newcastle had the 2nd most conservative passes after regains. This split personality of attempted high pressing, conservative play after winning the ball, but then lots of high risk passes in settled possession did not match up.

Transfer Market Struggles

I always felt his ability to improve players and emphasis on attitude and hard work were almost overpowered when it came to transfers. He would see Anthony Elanga or Sven Botman and love their application and envision what they could be after he got to work with them, and then overpay a lot for incomplete players who lacked crucial traits. I always had the feeling that he gained more and more power over transfers as his tenure went on. Deciding to ship out Minteh and Anderson in the summer of 24/25 was under regulation pressure somewhat but better planning could have avoided shipping away those two for a disappointing 70 million.

The 25/26 window was essentially all Eddie Howe, the front office was in disarray and it was up to him

-Elanga for 55 million

-Ramsey for 40 million

-Thiaw for 35 million

-Woltemade for 69 million

-Wissa for 55 million

Enough said. Judging players from other teams does need some buy-in from a manager/coach but very few can do both jobs, it’s just so much work.

Overall

The numbers in his 4 full seasons suggest a guy who is not a special one. Not one who can drag a team up and over their spending total by sheer brilliance or motivation or skill. However, who really is? He was beating the spend number by roughly 15-20% over those 4 years and for me that’s a clear win.

I really appreciate his demeanor and behavior.

I really rate his ability to get his teams to emotionally ratchet up but not go too far and meet big moments like late stage Cup matches vs Arsenal and Liverpool, PSG and Barcelona (for stretches) in the Champions League.

I really rate his ability to remain consistent and resilient and improve players others would give up on. Joelinton and Jacob Murphy are the best examples of this.

He led Newcastle to the best non Big Six season we will probably see for a long, long time.

He can coach the hell out of a set press.

He needs to improve his offensive thinking. He’s never shown a de Zerbi or Marco Silva like ability to get more control from players you might not expect, but seems to want more control and pushes his teams to try for something they can’t quite accomplish.

He doesn’t have a great handle on how to stop quick transitions after live ball turnovers. His teams have a lot of live ball turnovers because of what we said previously and most disappointingly he didn’t show a great ability to adapt or learn to improve these two things. His fixes were never clear or whole-hearted, he went to the transfer market and failed badly and the scouting report slowly ate away at Newcastle. It became clear they were not going to be an elite side consistently under Howe. He gets 15% of that blame, the spending limits the other 85%.

What’s Next?

Has there ever been a job and coach more well suited than the England job and Eddie Howe? His personality and nationality are near perfect for it. His weaknesses (questionable transfer market instincts, inability to build elite ball control and being shaky against elite transition attacks) would be minimized in the international game. His ability to motivate and get players up and playing together would be maximized and his ability to build a set defense maybe more valuable. The one worry might be over-attachment to devoted, trustworthy veterans but that’s a minor quibble. Give it to Eddie.

For Newcastle the hype is growing for Jaissle. From the YouTube video of his training and the absurdly positive spin from journalists I am pretty sure he, yes, can be, must be the miracle worker to burst through the financially unfair shackles and crash the private club the elites crafted, right?

Final Words

Thanks, Eddie Howe. Cheering for a 70th-75th percentile coach with a great demeanor who focused on the right things has been a very enjoyable experience. Howe gave Newcastle dignity, delirious moments and delivered a good level of performance. Several problems kept him from being an all-time great manager but that shouldn’t obscure what he gave Newcastle. It was fun. It was progress. It was a period worth being proud of.

When it comes down to it, negative juice sells better than positive juice. Vince McMahon knows fans need villains: powerful, hard to beat, ruthless and starting with a leg up.

Obviously I am talking about Arsenal. They have just signed Bruno Guimaraes, Newcastle’s identification figure over the past 5 years. Do Arsenal really need him? They have Zubimendi, Rice, Eze, Lewis-Skelly, Odegaard, Havertz, and Merino already. Probably not, and that is the point.

I have written a ton about Bruno, how awesome he was to be on your team, his consistent effort throughout games and throughout weeks and throughout seasons, the guy just never stopped playing hard and well with or without the ball. I think he is a top CL level player (maybe down a bit from I used to rate him one of world’s best, you can search his name or read here) but this isn’t necessarily about how good he is. It’s that Arsenal can just pick him off without worrying about offloading anyone else and just move on to trying to get Vinicius. Add him to that midfield mix somewhere.

First, before we get into the whining and complaining: I think Arsenal are run incredibly well. Their goal is to win and they work in the market, work in training, work in matches incredibly well towards that goal. The All or Nothing about Arsenal on Amazon led me to admire the relentlessness of Arteta and his team and how well they impress that on most players. Now, back to the scheduled tirade.

Spending Without End Or Worry

Arsenal have pushed spend way up over the past 3 years to take advantage of an improving side (they were on the rise before the massive investment came in) and the rules in their favor.

Over this time span they have sold 0 players for more than 32 million and let no players go that they would have expected to really give any notable minutes to in the present or future. Of course that’s how you would love to run a team! But it’s not how Aston Villa, Newcastle or West Ham, relatively strong financial teams, can do it. They cannot pay Alexander Isak, Youri Tielemans, Declan Rice and co the money they want. They have to sell their core and replace them.

For teams without the Big Six boost, more success makes the treadmill steeper. You suddenly have to pay players who have proven to be CL quality CL wages or they will leave, but you don’t have room to do so, especially if you can’t keep making the CL. So you wind up running faster and faster on a steeper and steeper incline knowing one big slip and you fall and it’s very hard to get back on and keep up (miss CL, fined by PL or UEFA, have to sell huge parts of the team because you can’t pay them). The scope of ways to compete with the Big Six is quite narrow.

Meanwhile, the Big Six teams are basically casually walking on 3 mph, 0 incline. Even if they decide to turn and dive off the back into the water: Spurs hiring Thomas Frank and then his random unnamed replacement, spending 400 million on Odobert, Bissouma, Gil and co. should have seriously harmed their future but there is a safety net pulling hard back up despite how hard they try swim away. Here’s a 400 million investment in your midfield, don’t worry, we will get you back to the top.

Manchester United hired Ten Hag, spent 505 million on Zirkzee, Sancho and co and the safety net pulled them back up.

Arsenal don’t really need the safety net for bad decisions. They have it but use the lack of fear of falling as a solid platform for aiming high.

What drives me the most crazy about this is Newcastle (at least for a long time) wanted to spend! They had the money! And they simply were barred from doing so because they weren’t good enough in the 2000s and didn’t have the right sponsors or connections that fit with the Premier League’s Ruling Class.

Anyway, back to Arsenal.

On the pitch

If you read me somewhat consistently, you know what drives me crazy are choppy play full of stoppages, flopping, time-wasting and whining to the refs. Arsenal not only exemplify all of these, they do it in a seemingly planned and coached and optimized way that takes it maybe beyond the passion merchants Argentina who are being ridiculous assholes out of love for the flag and not as part of some optimized, analyzed and detailed plan.

Set Play Marginal Gains

If I want to watch coaches taking over and putting in complicated plays that push the boundaries of what is legal to do and require serious downtime to implement and setup, I would be watching more SEC and NFL Football. In those sports the coaches essentially think for the players and over-control and design what you see. Decision making, quick thinking and general game intelligence is not as highly valued for most players there. Arsenal’s set piece department do exactly that. I mean we know the name of their set piece coach, come on.

Couple excessive physicality and boundary pushing with ref whining from players and coaches and you see a clear plan to try and gain a small edge. Refs slowly let more and more go and feel more and more pressure and eventually don’t whistle someone pushing the goalie 10% more than they should because it’s not nice to get just heckled and screamed at and treated like dirt by an entire team. Not every ref will give in, but some will.

I have pushed for a kick clock to help get rid of the long delays as Arsenal send the play in. Sponsors could often run commercials like the NFL do after Arsenal get a set piece, plenty of time until they take it. If they only had 10-15 seconds to take it, we’d see less of all this frustrating nonsense.

Dead Ball Over-Reliance At Expense of Open, Free-Flowing Transitions

Dead balls are much less fun to watch than open play and particularly transition play. There rarely are combinations, more of the skill comes from coaching and design and most of the rest comes from size, strength and ability to repeatedly deliver the ball to the exact spot needed.

Arsenal’s strength in these scenarios leads to them playing for these scenarios. You see a lot of teams who are terrible in attack at the top of this list: Spurs, Burnley, Sunderland, Wolves and Leeds…and Arsenal.

We love open spaces, right?

The Performance Not Being The Ultimate Why

There are other teams with similar financial advantages that they have wasted: Manchester United. for one There are other teams with similar financial advantages who have also been good financial stewards: Man City and Bayern are the two most familiar to me. They feel different than Arsenal in what they seek.

Not that they don’t press their advantages, not that they never whine, they never push boundaries, etc, etc but for both clubs for most of the recent past both seem to be chasing true elite performance and creating something fans love to see. Bayern’s glee at playing high-tempo attacking soccer can be intoxicating to watch even as they runaway with an overmatched Bundesliga, stretching back to the Jupp days with Robbery up until Kompany’s now. For Man City it has always seemed as if Pep is chasing a vision of a perfect performance in open play in his head. As a fan, this is much more aesthetically and philosophically pleasing than entire departments planning how best to time-waste when leading so Arsenal can clinch more points and how to distract the ref just long enough so we can grab the goalie for 1 second on a corner.

Pep has said he thought his best teams performance came in the Club World Cup against Santos. He called his players artists and said it was their all-time peak. It’s almost impossible to imagine Arsenal and artistry and peak coming at any time other than the most important time to win. Because winning is the only thing.

Arsenal do not want the game to go on if they are winning, they don’t care about the performance. When behind they are one of quickest to restart play, when ahead, well…the numbers show this is the culture of Arsenal.

Flopping

This one is totally data-free I admit. I am not really sure there is data out there to back up my point here, and I certainly went searching. I have the conclusion, throw it out there and hope evidence can arrive to back up my assertion: the True Way of the Journalist.

I think Arsenal try to sell fouls to the ref to earn penalties and ease attacking pressure much more than the average team. I suspect they analyze film, they practice flopping/selling and scout referees to know which way to do it. I know at times I sound like a deranged Illuminati believer writing about Arsenal but that ties into the larger point I will make at the bottom.

Why does all this matter?

Plenty of teams play brutally annoying ways but Arsenal couple it with being incredibly good.

They have been one of the best teams in the world for at least two seasons now and just absolutely stifle you. In what at times felt like a down defensive year they allowed something like 30% fewer xG than next strongest defense. It just feels like trying to dig through granite with a toothpick attacking against them. You can’t just say stay calm, defend set pieces, don’t get drawn in, because they dominate the field of play, they win and they win and they win. They have the rules in their favor, if not the most money, probably soon to be the most, buy peak players who are good, optimize those players to give least open space to opponents and push every single edge to earn set pieces, gain officiating edges, burn time, and earn fouls and score goals and crush hope, crush hope, crush hope.

Tying It All Up: All This Sounds Bad, Why Is This Good?

I stand behind all of this: Arsenal have the league rules written in their favor, an absurd monetary advantage over essentially everyone else, play in a disgusting style, have arrogant coaches and fans who have lost all perspective of sport, time-waste, flop, and aim for set pieces, abuse the referees like the worst of the worst youth sports parents and by God the Premier League is better off for it.

Sport is an entertainment product. Arsenal draw me in more and more by the rising disgust, anger and frustration I feel. I sometimes will even turn off an Arsenal game if they are losing and just check it on my phone because I am sort of nervous they will almost surely come back and win. I haven’t done that outside of gambling since I was a diehard SEC baseball fan arguing with people it was the best conference in my teens.

Look at this article for crying out loud. I have like 6 graphs in here just explaining why Arsenal Are Bad and I think my pulse went up slightly writing it. I love breaking the stats down more than anyone, but it just means more when you have a Big, Bad Wolf. I probably will just post an article saying HAHAHAHAHA 40 times in a row if Jacob Murphy tees up Lewis Miley to put away the win. That is what Arsenal bring to the table: they make an imaginary win months from now feel personal.

Thank you Arsenal, for being so painfully good.

Baseball is the only sport in full swing, the days are getting shorter, Scottish teams are playing in the Faroe Islands and you just read something about Daniel James going somewhere…all the signs are there: the Premier League is almost back. We will go through each group of teams to get a gut feel for the division this year according to SpreadEx’s Live Market points projection. A lot of last years team stats are based on my metrics, but a lot of the player graphics come from the great ScoutLab.

In this article we cover the Tier 6 teams, four of them projected to be just above the promoted teams: Sunderland, Fulham, Crystal Palace and Leeds.

Sunderland

SpreadEx Projection: 42.5 points, 17th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 16, 17th only ahead of 3 relegated teams

Secret Sauce is basically a compilation of xG, deep touches, transition production and progression turned into a 0-100 Grade.

Topline: A bad team without any additions yet mostly hoping the 3 teams coming up are really bad and they can get through the Europa League and survive.

Progression is Fields Gained per Ball Loss. Penetration is deep touch per Fields Gained. Shot trigger is shots per deep completion (teams at the bottom are firing on sight, at the top they move it around a lot per shot), chance quality is xG/shot with a bit of block% mixed in.

Big Changes

Sunderland will be playing in the Europa League for at least 8 games.

They have added no players of note yet after a season where they performed barely above a relegation level team. No one of note has left either.

Summary and Ways Forward

A dreadful attack that posed zero threat in settled possession (19th in deep touches) or in transition (18th in production) scraped together league average dead ball production and the defense was just good enough to get the fundamentals just barely above Wolves and West Ham. Sequencing and overperformance (-6 GD off of -16 xGD) pushed them up the table in a great year of joy for Sunderland fans but one that didn’t reflect a team that is set up well to continue competing at that level.

How can they get way better at anything in open play? They tried to play kind of slow and steady and actually move the ball around but it didn’t work. There was no transitional threat, that seems the best and easiest way forward as they try to truly become a Premier League bottom half team.

The gap between Sunderland and the rest of the returning teams is really large.

Key Players

Granit Xhaka

He no longer really gets forward and receives the ball or has serious end product but was basically single handedly responsible for Sunderland having any ball progression at all.

The need to hold onto him when Chelsea came calling makes sense. 15 million here or there is not worth really much at all when a player like this can probably shift survival odds 5-10% on his own. Sunderland are kind of right on the bubble where 1 crucial veteran player can maybe do that, right? Right now relegation odds are right around 25%.

Nordi Mukiele

When you need to defend your box a ton and limiting opponent chance quality was really the only thing your side did well, you have to give some credit to the guy with this stat line.

Brian Brobbey was a good receiver but I can’t put a guy who got 1.6 shots per 90 on this list, I’m sorry. It stops at Mukiele and Xhaka. Brobbey I do think is better than the other forwards they had, at least at being a physical presence who can receive the ball.

Prediction

I like the under here. Sunderland now have European competition, they haven’t upgraded their squad and were basically relegation level in like 80% of the game last year. I expect them to be the team at risk if any of the promoted teams can pull a Leeds and actually play well in their first year up and even if we get 3 bum teams I expect Sunderland’s metrics to be down in and around those. 17th the last 4 years has averaged 36.8 points, that feels closer to a solid projection than 42.5. Strong Under 42.5.

Fulham

SpreadEx Projection: 44.5 points, 16th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 50, 10th in the league

Topline: The Lays classic chips of the Premier League. You don’t even see them when you are looking at the variety of chips to grab, they are out of sight out of mind for the whole party but at the end of the night someone has eaten them and they were pretty solid, really. Reliably average in almost every way.

Big Changes

Marco Silva is gone, to Benfica. A wildly successful run at Fulham where they were totally saefe in the mid table for 4 years: a -6 GD over 4 seasons and an average of 51 points per year was fantastic work. Fulham have been so solid during this time, rarely looking fragile, at risk, or dependent on star players at all.

Raul Jimenez, Harry Wilson, and Samuel Chukwueze have all left. That’s 69 attacking starts: with 18 goals and 14 assists there. Coming in are a pair of youngsters in Gonzalo Garcia and Cesar Palacios.

Summary and Ways Forward

Wilson was a bright finishing spot on a team who did a lot of the midfield and defensive line basics well with the ball but were not a transition threat and were not good at converting 60-70th percentile progression and penetration into threat. A very low ability to draw fouls and corners and an even worse ability to turn those into threat seem a clear way to improve the attack.

The main question is shot and threat generation around goal. Fulham have always been pretty tidy in possession, pretty good at holding the ball and pretty good about getting it upfield. Almost no transition threat or dead ball threat meant they need guys to generate shots against settled defense and they just didn’t have that.

No one was above .34 xG per 90 and lots of the secondary attackers are just not shot-takers: ESR 1.7, Iwobi 1.4, Bobb 1, King 1.8. Wilson leaving leaves an even bigger hole there.

Why do the bookies see a pretty big fall from a team who consistently has put up league average numbers? They were dead average at 50 in my Secret Sauce rankings last year. The basics were robust, finishing was a problem, I think that is a profile well setup to improve with big signings (Garcia) and returns to health from formerly big prospects (Muniz).

They can control the field to a much greater extent than the other teams in this group. Against the ball the bend but don’t break (high progression, low penetration) strategy kind of netted out to average, like most Fulham things tend to do.

Maybe the markets seriously doubt Arbeloa as a competent coach and highly value the offensive patience combining so well defensive solidity that Silva brought and think that collapses? It is very hard to judge Arbeloa but a 6-7 point fall seems like way too much for simply switching managers.

Key Players

Antonee Robinson

the American was either world class or very close to it for a long stretch at Fulham until knee problems set him out for a long stretch. His combo of defensive work with attacking returns and elite progression is hard to match, he no longer returns quite that profile, dropping a good bit in final product and from elite to good in most other categories. He is heading into his age 29 season, can he recover from the knee problems to get back to his best or is he just a fullback heading toward 30 with his athleticism on the decline?

Gonzalo Garcia

A very small sample of under 1k minutes in the league for Real Madrid. The 21 year old had good numbers but on a worryingly low number of shots and an absurdly high xG/shot. A good aerial duel win rate and some nice passing numbers make it a very interesting striker profile but under 2 shots/90 to me means lots of variance here.

Alex Iwobi

A fantastic career for Iwobi who has been a part of a great combination down the left with Robinson for years for Fulham.

I wrote about Joachim Andersen, another guy I love, more here.

Prediction

Fulham’s solidity continues. They lose a bit at manager and overall organization but improved forward talent and a bit more in transition and dead balls makes up for losing Silva and surprise, surprise another basically league average season follows. Strong over 44.5 points.

Crystal Palace

SpreadEx Projection: 45.5 points, 15th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 48, 11th in the league

Topline: It’s a new and exciting and risky era for Palace, the Glasner super organized drag opponents into the mud side needed to be moved past, but they were really good at mud wrestling there is some risk leaving the muck.

Big Changes

Glasner is gone and Crystal Palace are into the Europa League. A squad that was seriously stretched during Conference League will now take a medium step up. The playing squad is so far basically exactly the same as last year with one new RB addition.

Summary and Ways Forward

Crystal Palace and the next team on this writeup were successful in similar ways: they earned their average Secret Sauce score with a defense first approach and they did not let opponents strike quickly. 8th percentile transition activation, 22nd percentile directness and only Arsenal were harder to quickly penetrate against (basically how quickly teams can tilt the field forward). Their attack was mostly a mediocre one looking for a quick strike or a dead ball to get a goal off low volume.

Palace opponents played the least vertical passes in the league, a solid block was their identity totally. Is that something that Glasner optimized and built into them and finely tuned the squad into and should we expect Pierre Sage to lose a bit of that? Or can they guy who earned 2nd place with Lens (nearly even with PSG on xG for) actually get some of Palace’s dreadful attacking patterns rejuvenated? Everton and Sunderland were only teams who stayed in the league with less possession than Palace and Sunderland the only team with a lower deep touch success rate. There is a case that Palace had basically wrung all they could out of Glasner ball and need a bit more control and verve.

Building a bit more structure and daring with the ball for Wharton, Sarr and some of the other big money attacking signings who have done nothing to be able to impact game more will be a big and risky step for Palace. It’s hard to imagine the carefully drilled and constructed defensive ability to just ruin opponents efficiencies staying near that level as they venture forward. It’s sort of like you have gotten really good at using excel for your projects, you know exactly which spreadsheets everything are in, which thing you have to copy paste and which functions you just can’t run or the memory overloads…but deep down you need to move to some kind of real database. It might be frustrating and risky at first but it needs to happen.

Key Players

Adam Wharton

Still very much a bit of a rogue gunner but his xPass overperformance has increased from the wretched depths it was at early in his career. Probably another one for the scouts to brag about, if my overcrowded and overstimulated brain can remember I think the tacticos and eye test cavemen were ahead of the curve when it comes to Wharton.

Daniel Munoz

A unique run-in-behind attacking wingback who has scored 11 goals with 15 assists in 2.5 seasons with Palace. Rumored to now be moving on at 30, the new RB signing could be his replacement. One of the great deals in recent transfer history, $8 million from Belgium for a wingback who can defend his side and get you .25 G + A per 90 and play 45 games per season.

Brennan Johnson

The second highest fee ever paid by Palace came last season for Brennan Johnson who immediately tanked what had been a very promising 2 seasons at Spurs to just truly dreadful, unplayable levels at Palace.

Their record signing, Jorgen Strand Larsen was arguably even worse and made the stock shorting article for me. Throw in Eddie Nketiah from the season before (played 400 PL minutes last season) and that is $138 million spent on attacking players, none of whom I can even pencil in for mediocre seasons this year.

I don’t even really understand what has gone so wrong here. It almost feels like it’s an entire personal problem in a way, not just “hey he likes settled possession and close interplay a bit more than long balls and transitions”.

Prediction

I do think there will be an adjustment period for Palace after the mega and successfully defensive Glasner moves on. I think this is what is eventually needed for long term progression but does bring short term risk (even if the new manager comes with a top reference on his resume of Lens massive season) which is why I think the 46.5 number is just about right.

Leeds

SpreadEx Projection: 46 points, 14th

2025/26 Secret Sauce Grade: 46, 12th in the league

Topline: Leeds were solid last year but in some ways that will be hard to repeat. Better ball control will be important for this very solid defensive side.