It’s been a rocky start to life under Andoni Iraola for Liverpool, as most expected it would be. His Bournemouth took a while to get properly clicking, and the Reds have faced some injury problems to start the season. But the combination of Florian Wirtz at the No. 10 and Rio Ngumoha on the right appears to have finally unlocked something for Liverpool’s attack.

The boys talked about it on the podcast, with Liverpool discussion starting at 29:21:

Rio has been thought of as a cut-in left winger during his early career, with only a handful of minutes on the right, and none of them looking particularly comfortable. But his ability to dribble by his defender and beat them to the byline — combined with an improved threat cutting in to his left — gives Liverpool’s attack some outstanding balance.

It’s a tiny sample, but what you see visually is backed up by the numbers. This guy is an outrageous dribbler:

And Rio on the right seemed to open up more space for Wirtz after he entered at halftime. I’m really looking forward to seeing Wirtz and Ngumoha together for 90 minutes — especially with Alexander Isak back in at center forward — and think it might be the combination that really gets Liverpool’s attack firing.

This week’s Variance Betting has 13 bets, including 5 on the Premier League, 4 on the Championship, and 4 on MLS. Two of them are on the same game: Crystal Palace vs. Newcastle. These two were both expected to be comfortably middle of the road, but are two of the worst teams in the league, and that’s led to some fairly wonky lines.

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The most transferred in player among the larger FPL player base this week is Rayan Cherki, but a lot of top FPL players are actually selling out of him. The issue with Cherki is just how high risk, high reward it is to put him in your team. He didn’t play at all against Ipswich last week, and went 90 in Champions League midweek, so there’s a good chance he doesn’t start at all against Aston Villa.

But City should probably have Cherki as part of their first choice starting XI. He’s just the best attacking midfielder in the league. His shot production, for himself and others, is off the charts good. He’s too high risk to take in FPL right now, but I do think that’s going to change in the near future.

A couple of the most popular expert pickups at the moment are Leeds players. I very much agree with the increased usage of Tarik Muharemović — as we’ve noted here before, his DefCons are very good, and Leeds are a decent defensive team. They also have a favorable run of fixtures coming up, so he’s an excellent player to have in your team.

I am slightly more skeptical about the increasing popularity of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, though. While he’s historically been a reliable scorer while fit and has been someone I’ve had in my own team many times, the current numbers do not really point towards good fantasy value. DCL’s shot volume is insanely low, and his xG is being propped up by one enormous chance.

He has decent fixtures right now, but this doesn’t look like an obvious FPL meta pick to me? Betting on this guy to score a lot of goals is quite the aggressive dice roll.

The best place to find listings for your country is probably LiveSoccerTV.

Roma vs. Napoli — Even though these are two proper big names, it’s been a tough start to the season for Napoli, who lost 1-0 to Venezia last week. They’re just not scoring, and this weekend they take on the league’s best defense.

Liverpool vs. Brighton — The marquee matchup of a Premier League weekend features Brighton, kind of funny on its own. Liverpool look like they’re turning a corner under Iraola too, if they can keep their best XI fit.

Freiburg vs. Bayern Munich — Freiburg’s dream start ended last week with a loss to Bayer Leverkusen, but it’s still Bayern vs. another team in the top 4.

Barcelona vs. Real Madrid — The Blaugrana have looked like the much better team to start the season, but they had a minor stumble against PSG midweek, while Madrid have looked much improved in their last two games. We’re going to learn a lot about both teams.

PSG vs. Lyon — It’s not until Monday, but still included since it’s such a big game. Lyon have started hot this year and are top of Ligue 1.

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.