A QUICK glance at the midfield rankings confirms that many of Dream Team’s usual suspects are thriving at the start of the 2022/23 season.
Kevin De Bruyne (£7.5m) leads the field with 49 points while familiar favourites such as Phil Foden (£5.7m), Raheem Sterling (£5m), Luis Diaz (£5.3m) and Bernardo Silva (£4.6m) are all there or thereabouts.
But there’s an impostor present too, none other than Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg (£3.1m).
Okay, impostor is a harsh word, Tottenham’s No5 has earned his 35 points just as legitimately as any other player after all.
The point is, this feels like a classic test of Dream Team gaffers’ knowledge and experience – do we think Hojbjerg’s returns are sustainable?
The biggest indicator when analysing a midfielder’s long-term viability is their specific role at club level.
Wingers, playmakers and late-arriving No8s all get the thumbs up because, by their very nature, they will be directly contributing to goals on a regular basis if they’re selected and playing well.
However, defensive midfielders and deep-lying playmakers are tasked with other duties and frequently go long spells without registering a goal or assist, mostly because it’s their job to recover the ball and give it to their more attack-minded team-mates.
Hojbjerg very much falls into the second camp.
And that’s not a dig at the Denmark international, every football fan worth their salt knows such players are required to form a balanced midfield.
It’s just that in the world of Dream Team, managers don’t have to worry about a realistic balance of profiles, they just want as many goal involvements as possible.
Hojbjerg has scored two goals and provided two assists already this season which is a commendable effort but the underlying stats suggest it would be naive to expect him to maintain his current rate.
For example, 100 players have registered more shots in the Premier League at this stage.
The 27-year-old has scored two goals from six shots giving him a conversion rate of 33.3%.
While this is to be applauded, history tells us very few players are consistently this efficient, especially not midfield anchors.
For comparison, Aleksandar Mitrovic (£4.7m), who has been described as ‘clinical’ many times over during his prolific opening burst, has a conversion rate of 19.4% in the league this season.
Expected goals (xG) is another helpful metric in scenarios such as this.
Those leading the way in xG are usually the league’s top scorers too and that’s the case currently with Erling Haaland (£8.7m) having amassed the most, followed by Mitrovic and Harry Kane (£7.5m).
146 players have accumulated more xG than Hojbjerg’s 0.3 after seven Game Weeks.
Again, while we need to give the former Southampton man credit for his finishing up to this point, we must also be realistic and expect a drop-off when it comes to shot conversion.
In fairness to Hojbjerg, his creative numbers suggest he may be able to keep chipping in with the odd assist – only 16 players have totalled more expected assists (xA).
However, taking everything into account, he simply isn’t equipped to maintain his current level of returns and the 4.9% of gaffers backing him should brace themselves for a dip in the coming months.
Martin Odegaard (£3.2m) can be snapped up for just £0.1m more and as a more advanced midfielder he’s more likely to provide goal involvements in the long run – Arsenal’s captain is expected to return from injury in Game Week 8.
Hojbjerg owners with a little more budget spare would do well to consider Jadon Sancho (£3.5m), Luis Sinisterra (£3.3m) and Jack Harrison (£3.5m) – only De Bruyne has accumulated more xA than the latter this season.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
