New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2019/20 – Che Adams and Joelinton
A tale of two £6m strikers. A tale of red cards, mediocre statistics, wishful thinking, youthful promise, Mike Ashley, Steve Bruce, Mark Hughes (yes!), anti-Moneyball, stating the bleeding obvious, dodgy hamstrings, James Beattie (yes!) and smoke & mirrors.
A more positive intro you’d be hard pressed to find… and you’re probably thinking you know where this one is going already. And you’d probably be right to be fair. But don’t judge just yet, let’s go see if we can find some positives amongst what ostensibly appears to be a roasting.
Joelinton
Newcastle United
FPL price: £6.0m
(Photo by Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
If your knowledge of obscure bit part players at Hoffenheim is better than ours then we apologise and doth our cap but we couldn’t help but think ‘what the hell is Ashley playing at now’. A record signing that blows the previous one (£20m for Almiron) out of the water is certainly a headline grabber but to what end exactly? Which is probably the issue with Ashley now; nobody believes anything he does is for the right reason. Which is probably because it usually isn’t. We wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the actual upfront fee is about £10m and the add-ons make it up to the headline £40m with promises of £20m ‘I f we win the Champions League’, blah, blah, blah. But maybe that’s just us being cynical… (and speculative, lawyers).
As for the player himself his bare faced stats tell us that he has scored a total of 39 goals in 152 career appearances. 21 of which goals were when on loan at Rapid Wien in 79 appearances. In the Austrian league. So outside of Austria he’s played 73 club games and scored 18 goals. And 7 of those were for Sport Recife. In the only time he’s played in a league anywhere near comparable to the one he’s walking rather expensively into he played 34 and scored 11. Not bad, actually. And that was mainly in the season just gone.
We still can’t quite get past the smoke and mirrors aspect of all this though. He smacks of a home brand Sports Direct product being doubled in price simply to appear as if it is equal to a Nike one in either quality or value for money. Time will tell of course but this one is definitely a wait and see job. The last time we had an expensive (ish / sounding) unknown Brazilian named Jo in the PL he scored once for Man City, 5 times for Everton and has since played for Al Shabab, Jiangsu Suning and Nagoya Grampus….
Opening Fixtures: Arsenal (H), Norwich (A), Spurs (A), Watford (H), Liverpool (A), Brighton (H)
Not the easiest at all then, or certainly a mixed bag at best.
Che Adams
Southampton
FPL price: 6.0m
Club Doctor Steve (Photo by Matt Watson/Southampton FC via Getty Images)
On viewing Che’s past online we couldn’t help but notice that red cards were mentioned an awful lot, as were such things as ‘dropped due to lack of attitude in training’ and ‘dropped due to lack of general discipline’. His ability shone through too though as he was named Birmingham’s Young Player of the Season in 2016/17 and then both their Player’s and Supporter’s Player of the Year in 2018/19.
Stats wise you do have to think that this is yet another one not based on any Liverpool style ‘Moneyball’ though as he has just 63 goals in 227 appearances. Or 1 in in every 3.6 games. That’d be 10 goals over a PL season. And 10 of those were for Ilkeston….
Injury wise he looks a bit dodgy too as he’s already ‘done’ for both hamstrings. Add in that he seemingly employed renowned fitness guru James Beattie as his… fitness coach.
Pre-season for Saints has looked a bit more promising though if we are still looking for lights under bushels. Che has grabbed a couple of early goals, albeit against the might of Guangzhou and Aktach. His level, perhaps, if we are being cruel.
Looking for more positives he is at least playing for a progressive manager who is willing to coach players to become better, rather than say Mark Hughes who simply sat in his office typing out excuses to use when they inevitably lost. (Former, very bitter, Saints Team News writer checking in here!).
As for his disciplinary and attitude issues let’s hope he has grown up a bit but we can always blame the parents if not (lawyers; we don’t know anything about them and it is pure conjecture), but as one (well named) fellow pundit (Steve) said to me ‘what do you expect when he is called Che’….. (For the record they called him Che Zach Everton Fred Adams). Seriously.
Opening Fixtures: Burnley (A), Liverpool (H), Brighton (A), Man Utd (H), Sheffield Utd (A), Bournemouth (H)
Certainly not the worst that, ignore the Liverpool game and it’s probably fairly decent.
Thanks for reading New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2019/20 – Che Adams and Joelinton. This article was written by Inittowinit WCC Champion 2019
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Many thanks to Init for introducing Joe & Che – I have a sneaky feeling they won’t be making Init’s GW1 line-up, but will they make yours?
He’s a massive fan by the sounds of it. Especially the Newcastle lad
Just being realistic! It’s been an odd transfer window so far. Usually we have more (viable) players to cover than writers to cover them but that’s certainly not the case this time. Yet, anyway.
Yeah this is very true. I’ve been expecting it to click into gear but it has not really happened which could be a very busy two weeks.
Groovy. Enjoyed reading that. Both players a bit away from the watchlist but am keeping a vague eye on Southampton.
Thank you. That’s all you can hope for when it’s not a massively helpful article. Although I suppose helpful goes both ways in terms of recommending or not.
It’s been very thin gruel so far, almost as if clubs can’t be bothered to sign anyone.
Cheers Init for the article. I won’t be touching either of them but let’s see how they go.
On a separate note, if/when Gueye leaves for PSG, how much do you think that affects Digne/ Coleman/ Pickford as fpl assets?
And while I’m at it, I may as well give you a snifter of draft 2,342,865:
I love Gana, he’s that archetypal ‘player’s player’, and you only really appreciate what he brings when you see the game as a whole in the flesh. However…… his distribution was abysmal. I swear his pass completion to ball boys was the highest in Europe last season.
And so to answer to your question; probably not as much (negative impact) as you’d think. Delph can replicate his work rate and he’s also a massive improvement in terms of technical ability on the ball so it could be a positive all round. Certainly the ball will be on the actual pitch for about 10% more time now anyway….
It would be great if there were stats for crapness as well as all the other metrics we’re bombarded with. Passes to ballboys would be one. Near maims of fans with miss-hits could be another. Completely f*cked up back-passes to your keeper. Collisions with goal posts. And so on.
Don’t know why I thought of this (I do) but conversely I’d expect Chelsea to have an uptick in CS’s this season simply because Kante will now be patrolling in front of that back 4 once more. Rather than playing on the wing!
I’ll be watching Chelsea with great interest as there are potentially great bargains in there.
Or
Like many other managers I’ll be plundering them shamelessly for Gw3 and beyond, writing things like I had my eye on them from the beginning. I knew the moment Frank took over they’d be returning to their former winning ways
Thanks Init very helpful info. I am now more comfortable with having Everton defensive assets than I was 24 hours ago.
Looking good.
Mine’s the same but for Fraser (instead of Moura), Deeney up front for Deulofeu and Coleman instead of Digne. And Robbo for VVD, thinking about it.
I keep wondering whether or not to start Ake for Coleman (or Digne) for the first couple of games, just punt a bit on Bournemouth. But Fraser and Wilson is probably enough.
Cheers Kralin. I can see Fraser over Moura given he has two good fixtures rather than one. And I’ve had Coleman in my team plenty of drafts. But enlighten me: Deeney over Deulofeu?
Ps. I think two BOU is probably enough.
Yes good point about Bournemouth. I’m just thinking Ake can keep the seat warm while I see what’s what elsewhere.
Deeney very narrowly because of the penalties. I know that’s a really crap and feeble argument. Deulofeu I know outpointed him last season. He has been in my side as I dither around after the cheap second striker compromise. Deeney’s just in there at the moment as a fantasy stalwart type figure.
Fair enough! Ps. Moura has become Fraser since we last spoke.
I like this. Great balance all over which is what I’m currently missing in my draft.
Thanks Smash. It’ll be hard for me to get to Aguero or Kane if they kick off massively but I guess you can’t have everything.
With Gueye and Zouma not likely to be there that’s enough to put me off Everton defensive assets especially as they are in the same price bracket as Liverpool, United, Chelsea, Spurs and City defenders.
Thanks Smash I now feel more uncomfortable about Everton defensive assets than i did 24 hours ago.
I saw some stat earlier on twitter today that without Gueye in 6 games last season they gave up 14 goals and only had one clean sheet. I didn’t verify it, but if true that does not sound great.
Mito that’s interesting (in a scary way) so I guess (see Init comment above) the question is if they were to have had Delph in those 6 games, would that leakage have happened?
Probably more that it will have been Schneiderlin deputising!
Yeah I really think they will be a massive loss to Everton: Gueye though he gives the ball away a bit really does protect the defence. PSG are buying him for a reason
Thanks for this Init me auld mucka, seems like you have a very similar take on new boy Joe Linton as I do!!
A sceptical one I assume?!
On so many levels!
Thanks Init, funny that take on Joelinton. Had a Toon fan ask me about him when they bought him and my response was ‘Stop buying no name Brazilians so I can help you out.’
I swear all the new signings have the most perfect names for Funny Fantasy Football team names!