Introduction
If you have read my most recent post for All About FPL, you will have noticed that I dedicated a large portion of that article to my thoughts on Crystal Palace's Jean-Philippe Mateta (7.5m). For those of you who haven't yet read that post, click here to read it, or check out my previous blogpost for more information. In this article (the one you are currently reading), I intend to expand on the points I made in my AAFPL post, and discuss further why I don't think that Mateta is as good of an option as some people are suggesting, and why we should perhaps avoid him as an option for GW1.
Setting the Scene
Free hit hero Mateta was a popular option towards the end of last season, scoring 9 goals and 72 points between GW27 and GW38. However, the main attraction to Mateta was his pricetag, which, to begin with, was as low as 5.0m, but rose with his ownership. Mateta only really came onto the FPL radar post Glasner's appointment, prior to that, he'd scored 3 goals all season (Glasner joined late February 2024), and didn't score his first goal until December 2023, 5 months into the season. So it's important to note that, while he did end the season with 16 goals, 13 of them came in a 4 month period at the end of the season.
Now, a couple of things to point out. This flurry of goals coincided with the appointment of a new manager, which could mean that Glasner actually unlocked Mateta's potential, and that therefore this new, high-scoring Mateta is the one that we will see from now on. We could also look to the fact that both Olise and Eze were fit during most of this period, which has not always been the case during Mateta's time at Palace, and with the departure of Olise's elite creativity, we could perhaps see a drop off in Mateta's numbers. However, some might suggest that this was just a purple patch. And that he just came into a rich vein of form, starting games week-in week-out for the first time in his palace career, with the support of a new manager etc. and that his form towards the back-end of last season will not - can not continue. Let's unpack this.
The Stats
As you can see from the table above, Mateta is in the top 8 percent of players for Non-Penalty Goals, but only in the top 51 percent for Non-Penalty xG; so already alarm bells are ringing. Lots of players over perform their xG (and many under perform - I'm looking at you Nunez), but not by this much. A discrepancy of almost 0.2xG is rather significant, as most players in the prem score at around their rate of xG, with only a handful of players (Son for example) able to consistently, year on year, outperform their xG.
If we look at Mateta's career as a whole, this is the first season that he has scored more goals than he was predicted. In the 6 seasons prior to last season, he scored within 1 goal of his xG 3 times, and under performed 3 times, which suggests to me, that he is an average finisher, not an excellent one. This leads me to believe that his most recent premier league season is an outlier, rather than what we can expect from him more regularly, and that he went through a particular purple patch after Glasner's appointment.
Even more concerning, when looking at this table, is his shots per 90, which is one of the lowest for forwards in Europe's top 5 leagues. As mentioned in my AAFPL article, players like Nunez and Haaland take over 4 shots per game, and, to quote myself, 'all of the strikers who scored 19 goals or more in the league last season were taking close to or over 3 shots/90', whereas Mateta was taking just under 2. Even if you disregard the first 6 months of the season, and look solely at his shots/90 post Glasner appointment, he was averaging just over 2 (2.08 by my calculations), which is still well below the (approx) 3 shots/90 of players like Solanke, Isak and Watkins.
In fact, Mateta has the joint highest Goal to Shot ratio in the league (0.32), joint with Adebayo, and just ahead of Wood. What's concerning is that neither of these players are elite PL strikers, and they played significantly fewer minutes than Mateta last season, scoring 14 goals and 10 goals respectively. These are not bad goal returns, but they're not elite either, and I don't remember either of these players ever really being considered great FPL options. Furthermore, he is much further down the list, and is out performing his xG by 0.1 per shot, which is extraordinary, and not maintainable.
If Mateta was taking these shots drastically closer to goal than other forwards then I could see an argument to be made that low-volume close-range shooting is a system requirement for Glasner-ball, but Mateta is taking shots at the same distance as players like Watkins, Jackson, Havertz and Solanke, which is good; it's a good distance to be taking shots from, but all of those players take more shots/90 than Mateta.
Conclusion
I think what I'm trying to say, is that Mateta isn't the best FPL option, and shouldn't be in our teams fro GW1, despite Palace's decent fixtures for the start of the season. In my opinion, Mateta went through a phenomenal purple patch towards the end of the last season, due to a combination of excellent finishing, confidence and a new manager bounce. Based on the data that we have of his career up to this point, he is unlikely to continue scoring over his xG, meaning that, if he continues at the rate of last season, he will likely score around 15 goals next season (based on the assumption that he continues taking 2 shots per game, with an xG of 0.2/shot), which is decent, but not exceptional, and there are so many other FPL options, particularly around his price point of 7.5m, who are likely to score the same or exceed this tally.
I like Mateta, I used to call him 'Mattekers' when I played FIFA with my brother because he always used to score finesse shots for me when we played against eachother; but I cannot recommend him for GW1. I find it very difficult to believe that he'll be in my team in GW1, with the other options that are available (but never say never).
I like Palace, I like their fixtures, I like a lot of their players as FPL options, particularly for the first set of fixtures, and Mateta is fine, but there are better Palace options, and there are better striker options - in my opinion :) (sorry Mateta).
I hope you enjoyed reading this post, if you did let me know in a comment! Don't forget to check back on my page regularly for more FPL content. Thank you!
Comments
Post a Comment