Are Crystal Palace serious Top 4 contenders?

You may have noticed that I use the lede of the Friday grab bag for a topic where I have the very beginnings of an opinion, but feel I am lacking the time or information to present a coherent thesis. And today’s is: Crystal Palace, Champions League contenders? I didn’t think they’d be here after selling Eberechi Eze, but they’ve hardly skipped a beat.

They’re currently the 10th placed team in the Premier League, but with the 4th best xG differential, and the fifth best actual goal differential with +5. Their first choice back 3 of Marc Guehi, Chris Richards and Maxence Lacroix has been exceptional. And they have some of the league’s best performing individuals in other positions too.

We’ve discussed Jean-Philippe Mateta in the FPL section of this newsletter a couple times — he constantly gets shots in excellent locations, and in a variety of ways. He’s just an excellent all-around center forward.

Adam Wharton is one of the world’s best midfield playmakers, regularly assisting his teammates for high quality shots with excellent line-breaking passes and balls into space.

And Dean Henderson is having an absolutely outrageous shot stopping season when everything else fails in front of him.

Ultimately, Palace’s downfall is likely to be their lack of depth. A couple of injuries to star players — and especially one to Wharton — is going to lead to a much more severe dropoff in form for them than a similar injury bug would to their competitors.

But the current version of Palace is better than the likes of Man United, Tottenham, Villa and Newcastle. I don’t think they’re actually better than Liverpool, as the current GD and xGD suggest, but the rest of the contenders for European places? Sure, I can buy that.

Over on the gambling newsletter, Ted has 5 bets on Premier League games this week and 6 on the Championship. The injuries and fatigue that come with international break can make it tough to figure out what lines are good, but there are several that are too favorable to avoid.

A lot of the Variance Betting content is about what not to bet on and why, rather than just touting picks. And the North London Derby is this week’s best example of that. The math suggests the line isn’t giving Arsenal enough credit and should be bigger, but there are good reasons to stay away this week. You can get all the details with explanations on every Premier League, Championship and Champions League game every week if you subscribe to Variance Betting.

On the podcast, Hayden and Pat ranked their top 10 midfielders in world football. You already knew the guys on the thumbnail were going to make the list, but stay for the explanation of why Pedri is the clear No. 1, plus some interesting picks for the back half of the list.

On Patreon, the boys told stories of way too heated 5-a-side matches on the B-roll discussion. This week’s Patreon exclusive podcast got into the details of how player recruitment works at clubs, and how much data analysis matters vs. the opinions of traditional scouts.

The FPL corner

With Gabriel set to miss a month with an adductor injury, players are scrambling to replace FPL’s most productive defender. As a result, the most transferred in player in FPL Mate’s experts poll this week was Virgil van Dijk, and by an absolute country mile as well.

And personally, I disagree. While I could definitely buy an argument that Virgil is the best non-Arsenal defender in real life football, there’s no evidence that he’s going to produce in FPL.

Virgil currently has just 5 shots on the season, totalling just 0.43 xG. Between his own style of play and how Liverpool are defending at the moment, he’s not racking up any defensive counting stats, with 1.89 tackles + interceptions per 90 minutes. As a result, he is currently the 28th highest scoring defender in FPL.

So who are the alternatives?

Jurrien Timber is the most obvious replacement as the 2nd highest scoring defender in the game, though he does have a minor knock. If you don’t already have them, all of Chris Richards, Marcos Senesi, and Micky van de Ven are cheaper options who are performing much better than Virgil in FPL. William Saliba is 2 points behind Virgil, but has more points on a per-game basis, and is now likely to become a primary set piece target in Gabriel’s absence.

For a more off the wall suggestion: Matthijs de Ligt or Luke Shaw. Recommending a Man United defender might sound insane to some of you, but they’re about to hit an easy run of fixtures. Away to Palace on Nov. 30 is the most difficult they have between now and Christmas, with games against West Ham and Wolves coming up.

Games we’re watching

Nice vs. Marseille — If OM are really going to challenge PSG for the title, this is the kind of tricky fixture they’re going to have to win more often than not to rack up the points required.

Newcastle vs. Manchester City — Sorry but this is an easy choice over the NLD, I do not want to watch Tottenham at all right now. Rayan Cherki getting fit and into the City lineup might make them the most entertaining team in the Prem right now.

Barcelona vs. Athletic Bilbao — Nothing too blockbuster in La Liga this week, in which case I default to Barca.

Borussia Dortmund vs. Stuttgart — Both top 4 in the Bundesliga, and I think they might stay there for the rest of the season. Packed with entertaining players likely to be the subject of endless transfer speculation soon.

Inter vs. Milan — A huge one for the Scudetto race, in addition to being one of the world’s greatest rivalries. Are these Italy’s two best teams at the moment?

Stuff we’re reading

Bill Connelly at ESPN has ideas to fix every single broken big team in the world.

Matt Furniss of Opta Analyst uses their expected points model to look into how much the Championship table is lying to us right now.

Matt Watts at Not The Top 20 digs into why Charlton have been able to punch above their weight in the Championship this year.

The Homies at Scouted are keeping tabs on their top 50 youngsters in the world and have an update on how they’re doing so far this year.

Gillian Kasirye at Total Football Analysis breaks down the one bright spot of Tottenham’s struggling midfield, youngster Lucas Bergvall.

Sam Dalling at The Guardian investigated Brommapojkarna, the small club that produced Bergvall and several other Sweden stars.

Thom Harris at The Athletic wonders if the U-17 World Cup can tell us anything about where football is going.

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.