Sunderland can already take a huge step towards safety

Hello and welcome to the Friday grab bag. We’ve got some very interesting FPL stuff to chat about this week, some other great stuff from around The Transfer Flow to share, and plenty of great games to watch this weekend. But first, let’s talk about Sunderland.

The Black Cats host Wolverhampton Wanderers this week, and they’ll be pretty significant favorites. They’ve already captured 11 points, and Wolves are off to a terrible start, with just two draws and no wins from their opening 7 fixtures.

Despite scoring 3 goals in a win over West Ham back in August, the Sunderland attack looks very bad, even for a promoted side.

And yet, they’re in an excellent position to stay up. Despite Sunderland’s lack of ability to create quality shots, there are three teams that are currently significantly worse. The Black Cats are sporting a not very impressive -0.23 xG differential per 90, but their rivals on Saturday are at -0.42. The two teams ahead of them in the table are even worse — West Ham on -0.56, and Burnley on a stunning -1.07, which is about as bad as last-placed Southampton managed last year.

If Sunderland do manage to win this weekend and push their points tally to 14, with a 10-plus point gap to the teams in the drop zone, I’d be pretty confident in their safety. Even if the underlying performances aren’t great, and even if they slump down to 17th quite quickly, I just don’t think the current bottom 3 are good enough to close a 10-point gap over the following 30 games. Though if you’d like to see an example of how quickly things can go wrong for a promoted team that’s flying high and outperforming their underlying numbers, 2008-09 Hull City is good for a laugh.

This is not a position I thought Sunderland could possibly end up in when the season started, but when you’re fighting the drop, it only takes a couple of lucky results to get you well clear of the really bad teams.

Also, I don’t see them capitulating with The Captain running the show. Old man’s still got it.

Over on the Variance Betting newsletter, there were a lot of favorable lines to bet on. Sometimes we get weeks where the lines look dead on and we have a lot of games we don’t like betting on, but there’s a pretty big gap between teams’ underlying data and the bookie lines this weekend. At the same time, there are a few we’re staying away from due to injury issues. You can upgrade to Premium here if you’d like to see Ted’s bets and explanations.

On the podcast, Pat and Hayden talked about some of the biggest games of the weekend. Liverpool-United and Bayern-Dortmund are the obvious ones, but they also get into PSG-Strasbourg, Sunderland-Wolves, and some conversation about Brighton:

If you prefer your podcasts in audio-only format, we’re on Apple, Spotify, and have an RSS for other platforms.

The FPL corner

With 3 goals scored in the Premier League this season, Nick Woltemade is trending up among casual and expert FPL players alike. If you have some non-numbers based reason to like his game or where Newcastle are trending, knock yourself out. But personally, I’ll be staying away for the time being.

Woltemade has 0.27 xG + xGA per 90 so far this season, well below a bunch of other players at a similar price point. He’s scored two headers and a penalty, and has just one really good non-headed or penalty chance this season. This is not the early shot chart of a player you can expect to go on to score a lot of goals.

So who might make a good alternative? How about Crystal Palace striker Jean-Phillipe Mateta, who’s getting almost no love from the FPL community at the moment. He’s been extremely unlucky, scoring just 1 goal from 2.94 non-penalty xG.

Mateta’s 0.42 xG + xGA per 90 is better than Viktor Gyökeres and Hugo Ekitike. And he’s been a double-digit scorer with more goals than xG the last two seasons in a row, so there’s no reason to believe he’s a poor finisher.

Crystal Palace do have a very tough fixture @ Arsenal next week, but it gets pretty favorable for them after that — vs. Brentford, vs. Brighton, @ Wolves. Their next three games against “big” clubs after the Arsenal one are all at home, and they don’t play a truly unfavorable fixture again until @ Newcastle in January.

I’ve added Mateta to my team, and I’m rolling with him until that Newcastle fixture or an injury.

Games we’re watching

PSG vs. Strasbourg — Ligue 1 getting smart and putting a decent fixture on Friday when there’s nothing else great on, instead of putting it up against the best games from other leagues.

Villarreal vs. Betis — A big Champions League 6-pointer in La Liga. These look like the 4th and 5th best teams in the league to me, and I do not have a strong take on which one is better.

Bayern Munich vs. Borussia Dortmund — While I do think Dortmund has the right tactical profile of a team to frustrate Bayern, the Bavarians are just too good at the moment. Michael Olise and Harry Kane run wild in this one.

Roma vs. Inter Milan — Serie A is once again shaping up to have the best title race in Europe, and it appears that Roma have joined the party. They’re performing very well under Gasperini, and surprisingly by building a defensive foundation first.

Liverpool vs. Manchester United — So… Liverpool’s underlying numbers are surprisingly poor and United’s look better than I expected. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Stuff we’re reading

The homies at The Guardian released their Next Generation list for this season, featuring 60 young players you should get to know.

Jake Entwistle at Scouted compares Declan Rice and Moises Caicedo, who might not be as similar and comparable as you think.

Grace Robertson from Grace On Football ponders Liverpool’s shaky start and why their players aren’t fitting together yet.

Vedant Kharakwal at Total Football Analysis profiles Kenan Yildiz, the Turkish sensation who’s having a breakthrough season for Juventus.

Sion Misra at The Cutback bids farewell to Jess Fishlock, the Wales legend who announced her international retirement this week.

Luke Bissett at Opta Analyst breaks down Strasbourg’s tactics and why they’ve evolved into one of France’s top teams.

Paul Tenorio at The Athletic covered Cristian Roldan’s emergence as a centerpiece for the United States and Mauricio Pochettino referring to the Seattle midfielder as his “perfect player.”

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.