This guy is awesome in any position: A Premier League recap

Plus bits on every other game from this weekend.

Author

Kim McCauley
November 03, 2025

Ted’s eating at nice restaurants, going to shows and gambling his life savings away in Las Vegas, so you get me for the Premier League recap this week.

This is the Brighton we were expecting to see to start the season, when just about everyone who contributes to this newsletter and podcast said they’d finish in a Europa League spot. Tons of high-quality shots, Yankuba Minteh contributing to two goals, and Leeds creating very little.

But as pro-Brighton as we are around here, I’d like to push back a little bit on the Match of the Day discussion about Danny Welbeck getting into the England squad. While I love dat guy Welbz, he’s running crazy hot and not actually getting good shot volume right now. This shouldn’t displace Ollie Watkins yet.

Very little to say about this one. Good team beats bad team 2-0. One obligatory set piece goal, one very nice goal from open play, very few risks taken after going up by two goals. The Gunners did their job and Burnley weren’t talented enough to force any adjustments to their gameplan. Next.

I hope you’re all enjoying the suggestion to put Jean-Philippe Mateta in your FPL team that I made a couple weeks ago, he’s now very much a meta player for the FPL pros. If a striker with an excellent goal record in previous seasons, on a good team, is getting lots of good shots and severely underperforming xG, it’s usually a safe bet that he’ll start scoring soon.

Meanwhile, check out Brentford’s shot volume this season. Eww, stinky.

 

Wolves’ underlying numbers do not suggest that they are the worst team in the league. Before this week, they didn’t suggest they were even a bottom 3 team in the league. But losing at home to Burnley on a massive defensive error is a gigatilter, and this team is now completely mentally boomed. I fear their xG differential is now going to catch up to their table position very quickly.

To support that theory: Fulham weren’t actually any good in the first half besides the goal, and Wolves held them under 0.5 xG. But once the 2nd goal went in, heads dropped on Wolves, and the home side completely dominated the rest of the match.

I don’t think we got any new info here — Fulham are mid and Wolves are going down.

Given the chaotic nature of Forest’s season and United’s mini-winning streak, this was a mildly surprising result. At least to most people — me included — but apparently not Ted!

“Forest have had weird results, but the metrics have been pretty stable and they aren’t even that far off last season’s. United are fine but not good… so we’re betting on home dogs”

Despite being second-bottom, Forest’s xGD is -0.14 per 90, which is better than top 7 sides Bournemouth, Tottenham, and Sunderland. It’s 3x better than West Ham and 9x better than Burnley. Forest are a mid-table team that’s unlucky to be in the drop zone, and last year they were a mid-table team that was lucky to make Europe. I guess it shouldn’t be a shock that they played mid-table Manchester United to a very even draw at home. They’ll probably be climbing out of the drop zone soon.

From United’s perspective, this game was the youngest Casemiro has looked since he was wearing a Real Madrid shirt, so that’s a positive development.

Hey, does anyone know if it’s helpful to have midfielders who can pass the ball?

Tottenham’s attack has been truly, genuinely stinky all year and this game exposed their in-possession game for what it is. Thomas Frank has done wonderful work improving the team’s defense and set pieces, but they’re creating absolutely nothing from open play, and it’s difficult to see this changing without a dramatic shift in personnel and style. They play 2 midfielders who cannot pass, every game. How is anyone supposed to overcome that?

Quite a useful slump breaker for Liverpool, who have ended their Crisis. Sorry to everyone who thinks Arne Slot is a bald fraud who should get fired.

Among all the negativity surrounding the Reds this year, I think there’s been one overwhelming positive: Dominik Szoboszlai is performing at a superstar level, and it doesn’t even matter which role he plays in. He’s been utilized as a right back, holding midfielder, and No. 10, and he’s effective in all 3 roles. Just build the entire plane out of this guy.

Newcastle scored a brilliant opener after 4 minutes and then… nothing. They stopped playing football for some reason. I’m not sure why they didn’t push hard to put a struggling West Ham under pressure, but they seemed pretty content to sit back in shape and let their opponents build up their confidence on the ball. It was bizarre.

I’m not sure if Eddie Howe was managing the fitness of his players or just really mad with the first half display, but he hauled off all of Nick Woltemade, Anthony Gordon and Emil Krafth at halftime. Their replacements didn’t do anything either.

One game does not make a trend, so I’m willing to write this one off as a weird blip for both teams. But the xG was 1.8-0.63 in favor of West Ham even before the last second 0.8 xG tap-in to seal the result. Oof.

This guy is extremely good at football.

Monday: Sunderland vs. Everton

While I have really enjoyed Sunderland so far this season and think they’ve already done just about enough to stay up, the regression monster comes for everyone. I suspect that the Iliman Ndiaye and Jack Grealish FPL owners might be eating good tonight.

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.