Anton Stach cost £6.0m on Friday and was owned by one manager in a hundred. On Saturday evening he stood over a free-kick at the City Ground with two minutes left and put Leeds top of the away wins.
He was ninth on our midfield board and last in our list of nine differentials. Here is that list, marked.
The nine, one round later
| Player | Price | Owned Friday | Gameweek 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anton Stach (LEE) | £6.0m | 1.0% | Scored the winner at Forest |
| Bukayo Saka (ARS) | £9.5m | 9.3% | Scored against Coventry |
| James Tarkowski (EVE) | £6.0m | 9.1% | Clean sheet, 2-0 v Palace |
| William Saliba (ARS) | £6.0m | 0.3% | Clean sheet, 3-0 v Coventry |
| Jurriën Timber (ARS) | £6.5m | 0.2% | Clean sheet, 3-0 v Coventry |
| Bruno Guimarães (ARS) | £7.0m | 7.1% | Clean sheet, no attacking return |
| Marcos Senesi (TOT) | £6.0m | 8.7% | Conceded three at Brentford |
| Gianluigi Donnarumma (MCI) | £5.5m | 8.6% | Plays Sunday |
| Matheus Nunes (MCI) | £6.0m | 1.7% | Plays Sunday |
One caveat worth stating rather than hiding. Those clean sheets are the team’s, and an individual’s return depends on minutes we cannot confirm until the round closes and the data lands. Read the column as what the fixture produced, not as a points total.
Seven have played. Two scored, three were in defences that conceded nothing, and one was at Brentford.
What Saturday actually looked like
| Fixture | Result |
|---|---|
| Arsenal v Coventry City | 3-0 (Friday) |
| Hull City v Man Utd | 2-0 |
| Everton v Crystal Palace | 2-0 |
| Ipswich Town v Sunderland | 2-1 |
| Nott’m Forest v Leeds | 0-1 |
| Brentford v Spurs | 3-0 |
Both promoted clubs playing at home won. Hull beat Manchester United, and Emersonn put Ipswich ahead against Sunderland before Jack Clarke won it at the death. Coventry, the third promoted side, lost away at the best-rated defence in the league, which is the one result on the list nobody will be revising an opinion over.
Brentford 3-0 against Spurs is the other number to sit with. Keane Lewis-Potter opened it inside a quarter of an hour, Vitaly Janelt doubled it before the break and Michael Kayode finished it just after. Igor Thiago, the £8.0m forward 17.6% of the game owns, hit a penalty against the post and did not score in a 3-0 win.
Friday’s preview called Thiago “a fixture call rather than a ratings call”. The fixture delivered three goals and the ratings pick got none of them. Both halves of that sentence turned out to be true, which is not the same as being useful.
The one that hurt
Marcos Senesi was on our list at £6.0m and 8.7%, thirty-seven rated appearances behind his number, fifth on the defensive board. Spurs conceded three inside 53 minutes at Brentford.
A defender at 1516.8 is a defender the ratings expect to keep clean sheets. That expectation is built on where a player has been for three seasons, and it says nothing about the eleven in front of him this August. Senesi is the same footballer he was on Friday. Spurs are the variable, and Spurs go to Newcastle next.
Sunday still decides two of the nine
Three fixtures left today, then Fulham against Chelsea on Monday night.
| Fixture | Kick-off |
|---|---|
| Brighton v Aston Villa | 14:00 |
| Man City v Bournemouth | 14:00 |
| Newcastle v Liverpool | 16:30 |
| Fulham v Chelsea | Mon 20:00 |
Donnarumma and Matheus Nunes both play at 14:00, and both need the same thing from it. City host Bournemouth, whose five best-rated defenders average 1473.2 against City’s 1520.0, and a clean sheet there pays a £5.5m goalkeeper the same as a £6.0m one.
Newcastle against Liverpool at 16:30 is the fixture with the most owned assets on the pitch and the least the board can tell you. Alexander Isak, £9.0m and 16.4% owned, was in Friday’s list of players rated below their price at 142nd overall, and his number rests on fourteen appearances. This is the game that starts turning that into something firmer.
What the round is teaching, with one game to go
Two of the nine names on a differentials list scored. One of them was owned by 1% of the game and decided a match.
None of that makes low ownership good in itself, and Senesi was on the same list and conceded three at Brentford. What Saturday says is narrower and more useful: ownership carries no information about a player. Stach was ninth on the midfield board on Friday and ninth on it on Saturday morning, and the only thing that changed in between was that 99% of managers found out.
The board updates when Gameweek 1 closes on Monday night. Stach, Ajayi, Mendy and Emersonn will carry a Premier League rating for the first time or an updated one, and every figure in this piece is from the snapshot taken on 22 August rather than from a board that has seen any of it yet.