Sheep Picks (6)

 

I quite often snipe at 'The Sheep' element among Fantasy Premier League managers - by which I mean the substantial numbers (possibly, alas, an overall majority) who don't really understand FPL that well, or even follow the EPL that closely, and so make most of their decisions based on an impulsive reaction to last week's results... and/or at the promptings of FPL's own vapid pundit 'The Scout' or the many similarly unimaginative 'influencers' out here on the Internet.... or indeed just following whatever seems to be a popular pick being mentioned a lot in online discussion forums. This often coalesces into a kind of collective hysteria - where the HUGE numbers of managers rushing in to buy a certain player bears no relation to his true worth, his likely points potential over the next handful of games. The player in question might not be at all bad (though often he is); but he is not the irresistible bargain, the must-have asset that so many people seem to think.

Hence, I created this occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are deangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

Bruno Fernandes is a fantastic player, certainly. And he just bagged a goal and two assists against Leicester before the international break (and was unlucky that it wasn't 2 goals, 1 assist). But... that doubled his tally of attacking returns for the season! And even that monster 17-point haul only got him up to a fairly modest 50 point total (Salah, remember, is already past 100!).

He, and United, have had a really poor season so far. He's massively under-performing his expected goal involvements, and has seen his ownership drop steadily every week - until he got that goal against Chelsea at the start of the month. Now, suddenly, 300,000 managers have rushed in for him again.

As I warned here, sentiment plays a large part in a 'sheep pick' like this: Bruno is a very well-liked player (even when he isn't playing that well) and Manchester United continues to be a massively popular club worldwide (despite having become a comical calamity for the past decade-and-a-bit); so, any slight pretext to take some encouragement about their prospects is latched on to rather over-eagerly.

And when people wax lyrical about what a great FPL player Bruno is, they're allowing themselve to don the distorting, rosy-tinted goggles of nostalgia for a distant heyday. Yes, he was absolutely sensational in his first season-and-a-half at Old Trafford. But then he really lost his way towards the end of 2021: his productivity has fallen off a cliff over the following three seasons, dropping to literally half of what it was in his debut full season (OK, in points terms, down by about 40%). In some ways, it's even worse than that, because while his returns from penalties have held up pretty well, and he still gets the occasional pinger of a free-kick, his goals from open play have dwindled to almost nothing. (And he started to pick up a lot more yellow cards too...)

Bruno, has, unfortunately become one of FPL's  most notorious under-performers. He's in a similar zone to Son, whose occasional huge hauls make him sometimes a tempting pick, but whose lack of consistency can be very damaging: with Bruno, you have to be resigned to sometimes enduring long runs of poor returns. (In fact, he's rather less appealing than Son, because he generally manages fewer really big hauls in a season.... and almost never bags one in successive gameweeks.)

I discern two further reasons for this sudden flood of enthusiasm for the United captain:

1) The myth of the 'new manager bounce' - the optimistic delusion that a change of manager always produces an immediate improvement in form. NO, it does not; not always. 

And, in terms of a profound structural change to a more positive attitude and a more successful tactical approach, that's going to take weeks - at least - to bed in. People may point to how quickly Arne Slot has managed to get Liverpool back to the top of the table; but he did benefit considerably from having a very easy run of fixtures at the start of the season. And he'd had the whole of pre-season to work with his players. And he was starting from a good position, with Klopp having built a culture of success at the club - which he could seek to adapt and improve on further, but didn't need to rebuild from scratch. Manchester United have been building a culture of failure for the last 10 years, and it's going to be a much, much harder job for Ruben Amorim to start putting that right. (Frankly, they just don't look like they have the players to finish any better than 8th or 9th, even with a big uptick in performance. They don't even really merit comparison with the currently disappointing Villa or Spurs, or the impressively over-performing Brighton and Forest; they're more on the level of Bournemouth and Fulham.)

An immediate lift in performance, when it does happen, is usually very short-lived - and is probably more properly attributed to the sense of relief among the players at having escaped from an unpopular/unsuccessful manager than to anything the new man has yet accomplished. That being the case, Ruud van Nistelrooy has probably already reaped all or most of the likely benefit of any post-Ten Hag 'bounce'.

While I am quietly optimistic about what Amorim might achieve at Old Trafford (he is, by some margin, the best appointment they've made since Fergie retired), the transitional period might be protracted and painful. He doesn't have a great squad of players to work with, and they're not all a great fit for the tactical set-up he's used at Sporting. 

While new managers sometimes bring a short-lived boost to a team on first joining, they also bring a lot of uncertainty. So, the change of manager this week should really make people more cautious about buying Bruno, rather than more enthusiastic.

2)  An exaggerated optimism about how 'easy' a win they'll get against Ipswich (away!). Remember how that went for Spurs last week? Ipswich are a decent side, dogged in defence, and dangerous on the counter. It could be a very tricky baptism for Amorim.

Moreover, as with a number of these 'sheep picks' I've analysed already, people seem to be fatally ignoring questions of wider context in rushing for Bruno now.

First, United have a pretty daunting fixture run up until the winter break: Arsenal, City, and Liverpool in quick succession, all away; and Forest, Bournemouth, and Newcastle at home probably won't be any picnic for them.

Second, you might want to keep a squad slot and a chunk of budget for the returning Martin Odegaard or Kevin DeBruyne. They are much more consistent playmakers and part of title-challenging sides, and should clearly take priority over Bruno if they can recover even 60% or 70% of their best form.