2022 Breakouts: U21 edition
The under-the-radar candidates
It’s summertime, the UK is about to hit an unprecedented heatwave, and I thought it was the perfect time to sit in front of a screen and dive into speculative youngsters for the upcoming Fantrax season. Yes, something is probably wrong with me...
The trio of Kyle Walker-Peters, Ricardo Pereira and Jacob Murphy held a (perhaps unwanted) unique position in Fantrax in 2021/22.
Using Overthinkingfootball.com’s excellent WAR rankings, we can see that over the course of the season, these three names contributed an average WAR of 0.00. Or to put that another way, these three players represent the point at which you could find equivalent value from a waiver wire replacement on a weekly basis.
Anyone below them you could reasonably assume had very little draft value last year. This isn’t an attack on any of those three players. Pereira has in the past (before a horrible run of injuries) been a very good Fantrax performer and probably will be again if he can stay healthy. But they were the unlucky three last season.
In this article, I’m going to talk about ‘Breakouts’ and specifically I’m going to look for age-curve related breakouts. I’m going to focus on names that were 21 and under in the last season, and it should really be noted that any player that young that is putting up significant league minutes is already an outlier. And that alone suggests they’re probably pretty good. But this is also the group that has the simplest path to outperforming their previous value. As they mature, as they learn and as they stake a claim in their manager’s thoughts, these players can far outperform their draft day value, making them a far more appealing draft-day target than a steady 0.00 WAR guy. I’m also not going to pick on the easy names, so we’re going to dive into a few not-all that obvious names and make the case for them as a potential breakout.
The names I’m not going to talk about…
The easy ones:
Now there are some names that are just too obvious. Waste of my time writing, and your time reading, to dive into them. But even with those names that are already stars, you should be more willing to project potential growth / improvement than you might with a player aged a few years older.
This category includes players like Bukayo Saka (12.53 mean expected Fpts last season), Phil Foden (12.77 mean expected Fpts) and even Jadon Sancho (9.79 mxFpts). Each of these players has already broken out (even if Sancho did it in the Bundesliga), though it wouldn’t surprise me at all if all three finished the season firmly entrenched as a top Fantrax contributor on a lot of title winning sides. They’ve all got good records of production, they’re all increasingly important on their teams and they’re all still scarily young.
The honourable mentions:
There are also a few names that for various reasons I am going to put to one side for this article, but that do deserve a brief mention.
Tino Livramento (7.8 mxFpts) would have probably been the headliner of this entire piece, were it not for the horrible injury that he picked up that will rule him out for most of the season. A debut season like the one he just had, at his age, in the first competitive adult football of his career should mark him out as special. He’s name number one on this list in 12 months time.
Tariq Lamptey (8.32 mxFpts) remains a bit of a favourite around these parts, but I can’t ignore that he’s struggled to maintain fitness enough to stay on the pitch. Alongside the next name on the list, I can’t rule out that I’m somehow jinxing him, so am going to not talk about him anymore in the hope that he can stay healthy and show his considerable talent on the pitch.
Callum Hudson-Odoi (12.11 mxFpts!!!) has already broken out for Fantrax from an on-pitch perspective as far as I am concerned, but 11 starts and less than 1000 minutes isn’t enough to fire a team to a Fantrax title. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in going on a Premier League loan and consecutive Chelsea managers have only used him sparingly (though his absence after January last season is rumoured to have been injury / conditioning related) so I’m going to leave him out - but be sharp on waivers in case he manages to get to favour.
Conor Gallagher (10.71 mxFpts) just had an incredible season, and seems to be keen to try to make it at Chelsea. This all but tanks his Fantrax value, but is hopefully the right move for his career long-term. If not, look out for him as a bounce-back name if he moves somewhere in 2023!
Brennan Johnson is carrying an awful lot of Nottingham-based hopes on his shoulders, having just had an 18 goal, 10 assist year in the Championship. He’s 21 and seems on a rapid ascent. I’m leaving him out here, despite him being available at a relatively good price (ADP puts him at around 105), because I haven’t seen enough of him playing to have a formed opinion. He could very easily be a bargain though, so if you want to throw your dart this direction, who could blame you?
So who do I have my eye on?
So moving into the more interesting part of the article, who are the mid to late round players that could catalyse your team’s push for 2022/23 glory?
Michael Olise - ADP 60.53
This one is probably one of the easier names to call. He already put up a fantastic 10.75 xFpts value last season in his 1141 minutes on the pitch, and that was in his first season in the league and following a slightly disrupted start to the season with injury.
Crystal Palace were an interesting team last season, as no team changed more between 2020/21 and 21/22 than the South Londoners. Patrick Vieira surprised the vast majority of us and managed to bring down the average age in the squad, change the style of football and manage to finish 12th whilst doing it. And that was built on a squad core where the top 3 players minutes wise in the team were 21 (Guehi, Mitchell and Gallagher).
Gallagher does return to his parent club this Summer, and it is true that he will be hard to replace, but Palace have the luxury of a returning Eberechi Eze, to pair with an emerging Olise, a year more adapted Odsonne Edouard, and a peak-years Wilfried Zaha. This attack could be a lot of fun.
Olise also took a number of set pieces later in the season and put up an xG+xA value per 90 of 0.38. Even a modest improvement here puts him well into the territory of a top level Fantrax player. He’s not cheap, as you’re talking Round 5 to get him. But this is an example where I’d be willing to pay it over some of the other players in this area like Matty Cash, Leandro Trossard or Callum Wilson. With each of those players, Round 5 value is probably about right and it’s very unlikely you’ll have scored yourself a bargain. With Olise you just might.
Rayan Ait-Nouri - ADP 88.24
Regulars of this Newsletter know two things.
Content post-parenthood comes about as regularly as a lunar eclipse
When it does come, it usually finds some way to shoehorn in praise for Rayan Ait-Nouri.
Now I’m going to put a huge caveat on this. I’m really worried for Wolves. They scored 38 goals last season. It doesn’t take any advanced numerical training to see that that is an average of a goal a game. They conceded 43. And that was with a goalkeeping over-performance so freakish that it can’t be expected to happen again. They’ve also had some defensive departures this summer.
I’m also going to have to make reference to the fact that Marcal started 17 games, and that Jonny returned late in the season to further complicate matters. And yet… talent still talks. He started 20 games in the League last year, and was good for an xFpts of 7.84 (which he actually overperformed in real terms). There is real concern about the fact that he’s not managed to fully lock down the position, there is real concern that Wolves might be right down in the scrap at the bottom of the table and there is a real concern that he might not progress as well as he might otherwise do in that context.
Make no mistake, this one is a gamble and it comes with a cost. He goes around the same range as players like Pascal Gross and Eberechi Eze, both of whom I would understand a case being made for taking instead. But if you’re someone who likes to leave defenders for later in the draft, this is the sort of name that could return you high defender value and I would rather spend my draft capital here than the likes of the next nearest defender: Aymeric Laporte (ADP 83.79).
Bryan Mbeumo - ADP 107.84
Brentford losing Christian Eriksen is a real shame. I know that it’s a wonderful comeback story for Eriksen. I know United fans are excited. But there’s something about a team like Brentford having a mercurial star that is just more fun than United having another forward-thinking midfielder in their long line of forward-thinking midfielders.
But I’m sure there’s no moping around going on in the Brentford board room. They know how to build a squad over there in West London. And one of the mainstays of the first year in the Premier League for them was Bryan Mbeumo. The France U21 forward had a solid, if not particularly spectacular first year in the Premier League, putting up 4 goals and 7 assists from his central or wide forward position in just under 3000 minutes of play, and slightly underperforming his 8.68 xFpts. This is a bit below what he was putting up in the Championship in terms of output, but is still a good contribution, and the fact he put up 22 and 18 goal contributions in his age 19 and 20 seasons respectively is a good sign, even if they were in the Championship.
There are a few elements of caution here. Referring to the stats platform SmarterScout, we can see that they are relatively cold on Mbeumo’s attacking contribution as a CF/ST (rating him only 24/100 on attacking output in this position) but he profiles more effectively (though with smaller sample) as a right winger (71 out of 100).
It’s absolutely true that this one requires a bigger maturation of Mbeumo’s game to truly return breakout value. But here you’re getting almost guaranteed minutes, a reasonable enough floor, alongside the potential for more output. He wouldn’t be on all my teams, but I could certainly see myself calling his name as a fourth forward in certain draft situations.
Jacob Ramsey - ADP 147.07
Jacob Ramsey had a season long WAR value of 0.07. This is an interesting value, because he did that despite having an average of 6.63 xFpts. Bryan Mbeumo, who we just talked about, had higher xFpts and yet his season long WAR last season was -0.05.
This has quite a lot to do with Ramsey having bunched up his points quite a lot into a few very goal and assist skewed games. He scored against Norwich, had a goal and assist against Manchester United, put two past Leeds and scored against West Ham.
I don’t normally love midfielders who have their points dragged up by goals in this manner, but it is worth saying that FBRef have him in the 87th Percentile for npxG, which is very respectable for a young midfielder. He’s also clearly one of Steven Gerrard’s mainstays, having managed to get almost 2500 minutes at CM in a Premier League side at the age of 20.
Like Mbeumo, this is absolutely about projecting improvement. Both in Ramsey’s output, but also in what Aston Villa can do. They were fine with Gerrard in charge, but it was hard to not feel a little disappointed in the attacking output in particular of a team that has the likes of Ollie Watkins, Emiliano Buendia, Philippe Coutinho, Lucas Digne, Leon Bailey and even Danny Ings. If they can take a leap next season beyond their 1.37 goals per game rate, there’s points to be had all round.
Continuing the trend of looking at what is available around the same point in the draft, on the assumption that Fabio Vieira’s ADP is just taking some time to adjust, and that Zinchenko will rise now he’s following Fabio to the Emirates, only really Antonee Robinson has a claim to true starter level upside in the same region.
The high-upside long-shot: Harvey Elliott (166.08 ADP)
At 17 years of age Harvey Elliott played 2700 minutes for Blackburn in the Championship, standing out as one of the most effective progressive players in the division and finishing with 7 goals and 11 assists. That in itself is impressive. He then came back to parent club Liverpool, shone through pre-season and appeared to have earned himself a midfield berth in a title-chasing machine of a Liverpool side. Then came one unfortunate tackle a few games in and his season was done.
I don’t love projecting players after serious injuries. It takes time to get back explosiveness and confidence, and for a young player that can be particularly tough. So that’s why I’m putting him in as a “long-shot”.
But don’t make any mistake, there’s extreme talent here. And if he does play, he’s playing surrounded by an incredible supporting cast. They’re different players, but there’s early-Foden level upside here. And it’s basically free to buy into in most leagues. Stashing in Fantrax is often a difficult thing to do, but if there’s a talent level that potentially deserves being stashed, it’d probably look a bit like Harvey Elliott. In some ways, he’s actually my favourite candidate we’ve talked about here.
So that’s it. Some of these players may be entirely irrelevant for Fantrax in 2022, but for the later round names, they’ve at least got reasons for optimism. If you pushed me to a personal confidence ranking, I’d go with (the not too far from ADP):
Olise
Ait-Nouri
Elliott
Mbeumo
Ramsey
Agree / Disagree? Think you’ve got eyes on the next gem? Let me know who you’ve got in your watch-list already via Twitter.