Are Chelsea's wingers getting good?

Hello and welcome to the Friday grab bag. Chelsea host Arsenal this weekend, with the prospects of a continuing title race squarely on their shoulders. If the Gunners win at Stamford Bridge, we’re looking at a very heavy runaway favorite.

With no real striker to speak of and Cole Palmer dealing with an injury, Chelsea have been extremely reliant on their rotating cast of young wingers for attacking production this season. They’re quite the expensive bunch, but we’ve been mostly positive on their signings in this newsletter, with one exception that we’ll get to in a minute.

First up is Estevão, who put up crazy numbers in Brazil as a teenager that suggested he was on the road to superstardom. He is, indeed, still on that road. Sheesh.

Less successful so far this season has been Jamie Gittens, who is certainly not helping the Bundesliga beat the allegations. I remain high on Gittens’ physical and dribbling talent, but there’s no denying that he has found it much more difficult to be effective against defenders that close down space and engage with him physically.

I was very anti-Pedro Neto signing, and he wasn’t great last season. This year, he’s actually Doing Shit, though not necessarily at £55m transfer fee levels. He’s never going to live up to that, and I’ll never understand why Chelsea didn’t just keep playing Raheem Sterling and Noni Madueke instead of signing him, but he has moved up a tier from Extremely Mid to Fine, I Guess.

And then there’s the guy who is most interesting to me. Alejandro Garnacho, who was criticized at Manchester United for being a selfish player who always chose a shot over passing to his teammates, has absolutely not been that style of player in his Chelsea starts. It’s too small of a sample to draw any big conclusions, but a big enough one that I think he should start more games.

The very average striker set of Joao Pedro, Marc Guiu and Liam Delap might limit Chelsea’s attacking ceiling, but I am very interested to see what they can do with a Garnacho-Palmer-Estevão band of attacking midfield talent. We’ve yet to see that combo for any kind of extended period, but I hope we get it soon.

You might have noticed that Liverpool’s defense isn’t looking so hot at the moment. They couldn’t get a deal for Marc Guehi over the line before the end of the summer, and that’s looking like a pretty big miss at the moment. The Reds will probably come back in for him in January, but they’ll need backup plans if Palace decide they’re not selling mid-season. On the podcast, Patrick and Hayden talked about who those alternative targets should be.

You can watch the post-show B-roll chat over on Patreon, where they talked about Harry Kane wanting to be an NFL kicker, and the current best one being a former MLS draft pick. On the Patreon-exclusive podcast, they dove into what Manchester United need to do to qualify for Europe, as well as the Premier League relegation battle.

If you’re looking for Variance Betting, that’ll be out later today.

The FPL Corner

I was hoping to make a counter-expert argument about why you should pick up Morgan Gibbs-White in this week’s FPL piece, but he’s out injured, so you should absolutely not do that.

Even if he was fully fit, the projections at Solio FPL aren’t liking Nottingham Forest’s chances of capitalizing on an easier schedule over the next few weeks. You probably do not need a projection model to tell you that Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City have good numbers, but Newcastle’s presence here might be mildly surprising, given that they’re currently 14th in the table.

When I plugged my team into Solio’s team optimization tool, it suggested I swap out one of my defenders for Newcastle center back Malick Thiaw, and I’ve got to say I like the suggestion. He’s very much against the current meta among public-facing FPL pros, but he’s putting up big aerial and ball-winning numbers for a team that’s been better defensively than their goals conceded record suggests.

One currently popular move that I don’t love is Eberechi Eze, who’s hugely popular after his hat trick against Tottenham last week. While you can’t exactly go wrong with anyone who’s starting for Arsenal at the moment, I wouldn’t expect continued goal bursts from Eze. He’s not getting a ton of high quality shots, and he hasn’t gotten a lot of them historically either.

Enjoy the highlights and celebrate the performance, but don’t make an FPL decision based off it.

Games we’re watching

Bayer Leverkusen vs. Borussia Dortmund — Firing Erik ten Hag and reverting to a 3-4-3 system is working wonders for Leverkusen, who are up to 3rd in the table. Dortmund haven’t been great the last couple weeks, but they’re coming off a demolition of Villarreal in CL midweek.

Monaco vs. PSG — This summer, Monaco decided to hodl on their young talents instead of negotiating sales. That’s looking like a disastrous decision, as they’re down in 8th on an even goal differential. But getting a result against PSG could finally jump-start their season.

Chelsea vs. Arsenal — I don’t think we’re going to have a real title race, and if we have one, I don’t think Chelsea are going to be in it. But this sure would be a spicy narrative resetter.

Sevilla vs. Real Betis — Always got to recommend the local rivalries/watching Giovani Lo Celso.

Roma vs. Napoli — Table-toppers Roma have focused on defensive solidity over creating chances, which is very un-Gasperini-like, so this isn’t likely to be a wide open affair. But it’s probably the biggest game in Europe this weekend.

Stuff we’re reading

Ed Malyon and Matt Hughes at FootBiz report on the never-ending Super League saga and the chances they end up going LIV Mode.

Jake Entwistle at Scouted profiled Alvaro Rodriguez, Elche’s big fella who’s winning an absolutely stupid number of aerials.

Ryan Benson at Opta Analyst looks at Yeremy Pino’s numbers and how the Crystal Palace winger is starting to replace Eze’s output.

Bola Atta at Total Football Analysis dug into the game of Oscar Mingueza, a playmaking fullback that we expected Celta Vigo to sell to a richer club last summer.

Grace Robertson at Grace On Football breaks down the Ballon d’Or contenders and the Prem heads might be surprised to hear that she thinks Kylian Mbappe has an edge over Erling Haaland.

Michael Cox at The Athletic ponders why the diamond midfield that Carlo Ancelotti made famous at AC Milan has fallen out of fashion.

Jeff Carlisle at ESPN made his picks for who’s currently in line to make the United States squad for the World Cup.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.