In the EPL Draft Fantasy Football game, it's a sad day when a new transfer actually diminishes the fantasy value of one or more players from the clubs involved. However, it happens more often than we sometimes care to consider. Especially with the re-introduction of the five-subs rule this season, crowded and complicated dressing rooms could lead to fewer minutes and fewer opportunities for many key players. In this article, we'll discuss (at least) five players whose fantasy value has taken a hit, for a plethora of reasons, before the 22/23 season. Click here for details on how you can access our 22/23 Draft Kit.
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Transfer Madness Leads to Rotation Sadness
The Premier League is flushed with cash these days. We've seen financial injections from American billionaires, hedge fund managers, sovereign wealth funds, and (regrettably) Russian oligarchs. There's no getting around the fact that the Premier League has been allowed to become a pay-to-play league. This, of course, leads to some mind-blowing transfer fees. But a trend we've seen more recently is teams paying exorbitant fees to add serious talent to their teams merely to add depth to their overall squad or to provide motivation to their starters. We must be cognizant of these situations as fantasy managers, as once-great fantasy assets make moves to congested squads and likely see a sharp drop in EPL playtime.
Eddie Nketiah
Imagine for a moment the utter feeling of disappointment Nketiah must have felt when Arsenal signed Gabriel Jesus mere days after he extended his contract and was granted the number 14 shirt (once famously donned by Thierry Henry). After leading the line at the tail-end of last season and amassing 5 goals in the process, he's now been relegated to a super-sub, rotation, cup match role once again. Granted, he will most definitely be afforded more play time than he was during the bulk of last season, when he was lucky to get 10 minutes at the end of a match to stretch his legs. He's earned more minutes; plus, the 5 subs rule as well as the onset of Europa League fixtures this season will ensure he features in a fair amount of matches.
But as fantasy value is concerned, Eddie "Money" has basically lost all value. As a rotation piece, he interests me little, since he very much relies on runs of form to showcase his skills. When he's not "feeling it," Nketiah can be incredibly goal-dependent. Granted, this doesn't mean that he can't be a very solid streamer for your fantasy team when given the random starting nod. If you see him in the starting XI, he's worth the gamble! However, unless you have already drafted Jesus earlier in the draft, I wouldn't recommend wasting valuable draft capital on him.
Richarlison (and Dejan Kulusevski)
While I don't agree with the folks on Twitter calling the Richarlison-to-Spurs deal a "bargain" (and, honestly, I can't figure out if they're being sarcastic or not), I do think this move is great for Spurs because it gives them depth. And "depth" is a word that should immediately make any draft manager shudder. The word itself has no inherent negativity, but when it's used to describe the £60m sale of a featured forward on a lower-tier PL team to one of the "Big 6" with a fairly established front line, it's not music to our ears. Take this headline from The Athletic as all the proof you should need: "Richarlison to join Tottenham: They don't truly need him, but that's why fans should be excited." Yikes.
There is a slightly more favorable take on this deal. Some argue that Conte has never really taken to Kulusevski. Like Royal and Reguilón, there are players who Conte simply doesn't like. Some claim Kulusevski is among that number. But scoring 5 goals and assisting 9 (since February) on the way to helping the team secure a Champion's League spot seems like a fairly sure-fire way to win any manager's affection. This narrative just doesn't track for me, especially since Kulusevski was a Conte signing last January.
In the discussions that I've had with multiple Spurs sources, the expectation is that Richarlison will challenge Kulusevski for that RW spot. The playtime share depends on who wins that competition. You also have to factor in Spurs' participation in the Champions League this season. Conte will undoubtedly play his strongest XI in that competition, likely meaning rotation in that RW spot and many others. So, the most likely scenario is that we see more rotation on that right wing, with Richarlison coming at RW but also a bit across the front 3 to give Kane and Son a rest at times (which is desperately needed), and we see weakened lineups playing in the EPL after midweek UCL matches. All in all, Richarlison is likely to see fewer minutes overall than last year and you should probably drop him at least 1 round in your ranks.
Bruno Fernandes
As soon as Christian Eriksen's "verbal agreement" with Manchester United was announced, I made a mental note to downgrade Bruno in my rankings. It's been an unfortunate turn of events for the Portuguese midfield maestro. Last year, how did the team reward him after a season and a half of seemingly being the only United player who was... even trying? Well, they brought in the one player who has hindered Bruno's international success: Ronaldo. They've rarely played well together for Portugal and, wouldn't you know it, the same thing happened at club level. In 36 matches in 21/22, Fernandes posted 10 goals and 6 assists. For comparison, in the 14 games he played after his January transfer in 20/21, he posted 8 goals and 7 assists.
We saw Bruno lose penalties completely last year, which makes sense given the arrival of one of the greatest penalty specialists of all time. And now, with the addition of Eriksen, we're likely to see him lose a lot of set pieces. In 21/22, it's hard to find a stat category that didn't decrease for Fernandes. His one saving grace was the fact that he was just about the only creative force in a stale, stagnant United attack. The mere fact that he would still try to force key passes and shots ensured that he had a ghost point baseline. But anyone who rostered him remembers stretches where he would be completely anonymous on the pitch and on the stat sheet. And now, a bonafide #10 has arrived at the club. This all trends in the wrong direction for Bruno being a first-round pick. All of this being said, the MU attack could see a revitalisation this year. Fernandes still has the potential to be a MID1 and even improve on his numbers from last season, especially if Ronaldo leaves, as is rumored, and he goes back to taking penalties. But as a first-round asset, there's too much risk there for me.
Ivan Toney
This call-out is also tied to the remarkable Dane who returned to football last season after his heart literally stopped beating on the pitch a year prior. Brentford took a chance on Eriksen and it's safe to say he demolished any and all expectations, so much so that Manchester United came-a-calling with a meaty new contract. Brentford are now down a #10 and a set-piece guru. More importantly, Ivan Toney has lost his most reliable supplier of attacking chances. After the way that he finished the season, Toney was creeping up draft boards, sometimes surpassing players like Richarlison, Jota, Mahrez, and Sterling in early mock drafts. Unfortunately, it's time to start fading him. While he's a solid fantasy asset in a shallow FWD pool, it's going to be important to understand his value sans Christian.
In order to truly grasp this, we merely need to look at his numbers pre-Christian and with Christian. Eriksen's first real match (in which he played 90 mins) was March 5th. After that, he played every match but one. And with the Dane on the field, Toney feasted. He posted 160 fantasy points (in Fantrax default scoring), an average of over 14.5 PPG. In those 11 games, he also amassed 6 goals, 3 assists, 18 key passes, 10 shots on target, 7 successful dribbles, and 46 aerials. He was the 8th best overall player in this period.
So, how do these very respectable numbers compare to Toney's games without Eriksen? In his 22 games played prior to March 5th, he averaged 10.3 PPG, with 6 goals, 2 assists, 25 key passes, 20 shots on target, and 17 successful dribbles - quite the drop-off. This is fairly concerning considering he played two times as many games without Eriksen than with him. Take heed, though, that these numbers still placed him just inside the top 25 overall point-scorers during that timeframe. For Toney, it's not all doom and gloom. He'll be serviceable, particularly if Brentford are able to bring in a decent replacement for Eriksen. But certainly don't reach for him in drafts like you may have been planning to before Eriksen's departure.
Diogo Jota
*Caveat: please read this one carefully, as it's not all negative.*
The case for and against drafting Diogo Jota has been quite the rollercoaster this offseason. If you will, cast your recollection back to the immediate aftermath of the Champions League final when Mane announced that he'd like to leave Liverpool. Not long after, we heard rumblings of the departures of Origi and Minamino, and fantasy managers were collectively licking their chops at the idea of swooping Jota, whose 13.5 points per start in 21/22 put him squarely above guys like Bowen, Ronaldo, and Mane (because fate has a sense of humor). Well, if we collectively licked our chops before, then we shed a collective tear for Jota's fantasy value when Darwin Nunez signed for insane money by Liverpool standards.
So we're in a bit of a predicament now when it comes to Jota. And the predictions of him as a fantasy asset vary widely depending on who you ask. The Draft Society's own Tottiandor sees Nunez as needing some time to bed in, citing Klopp's insistence on taking his time with basically every other signing, Diaz notwithstanding, though none of them have cost "up to €100m with add-ons". Dissenting voices would point to this price tag as a clear sign of intent and likely mention that Klopp seems to relish Jota in that super-sub role in which he can just decimate tired defences.
Where does that leave us then? Well, at the end of this terribly depressing article about tanking fantasy values, let this be your glass half full. Remember how we keep discussing the rotation issues that Jota faced last season? Those pesky rotation issues landed him right between Matip and Antonio as the 21st highest-scoring fantasy player overall. Mane, the club darling who kept Jota sidelined, outscored him by less than 20 points while playing almost 500 more minutes. If you tell me that Jota will get even ONE additional minute on the pitch after an almost-top-20 season as a super-sub, then sign me up. And if I can get him in the 3rd or (lord have mercy) 4th round, even better.
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