What to expect as the Premier League returns
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With the World Cup now over, attention has quickly snapped back to the Premier League return ahead of its resumption on Boxing Day.
While some clubs were rightly proud of a high level of representation at the tournament, there will clearly be knock-on effects as tired players fly home from Qatar in need of a rest before they are able to give 100 per cent in the league campaign.
Pre-season title favourites Manchester City find themselves five points adrift of in-form Arsenal and while they have a fresh Erling Haaland at their disposal, the rest of their squad have been far from idle.
Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea also saw their players play a significant part at the World Cup, with the likes of Ivan Perisic, Hugo Lloris, Cristian Romero, Raphael Varane and Mateo Kovacic all featuring in the tournament’s latter stages.
League leaders Arsenal and sixth-placed Liverpool could be in a position to steal a march on their rivals, having accumulated fewer minutes at the tournament.
Similarly, Eddie Howe’s Newcastle are well-rested and primed to continue their pre-World Cup form. The Magpies sent only five players to Qatar and of those, only Fabian Schar took to the pitch in the knockout stages – playing 45 minutes before being hooked at half-time during Switzerland’s heavy defeat against Portugal.
Who is at risk of burnout?
The World Cup has stretched an already busy domestic calendar to breaking point, with EFL Cup games involving top-flight sides scheduled only two days after the final and the Premier League returning barely a week later.
Some players have already played the equivalent of 30 full matches, with six months of the season still remaining.
Harry Kane is the most extreme example, with Spurs manager Antonio Conte having described his talisman as “really, really tired” in the week before he left for Qatar. Kane has started every single game for club and country across five different competitions – the Premier League, EFL Cup, Champions League, Nations League and World Cup.
Kane’s total of 2,735 minutes so far this season is the highest of any Premier League player, ahead of Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk and Spurs team-mate Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg.
In fact, Conte has a number of key players at risk of burnout, with Perisic, Eric Dier and Rodrigo Bentancur also featuring in the top 10 for most minutes among outfield players.
Tottenham’s 11 representatives at the World Cup have accumulated an average of nearly 2,000 minutes each across all competitions, far more than any other club. As well as recording the highest average amount of World Cup playing time, Spurs’ returning contingent had amassed more minutes before the tournament than any of their rivals.
Pep Guardiola is managing a similar problem at Manchester City, with 15 of his 17 most-used players this season – plus Kalvin Phillips who was returning from injury – having travelled to Qatar. However, pre-World Cup minutes were shared more evenly among the City squad, potentially reducing the risk of exhaustion for any individual.
Who has the toughest fixtures when the Premier League returns?
Looking at the next six Premier League matches, Crystal Palace have the trickiest post-World Cup schedule, with five games against the current top nine. However, Patrick Vieira can take solace in the fact that his players are well-rested, with just two – Joachim Andersen and Andre Ayew – having gone to the World Cup.
North London rivals Tottenham and Arsenal have been handed challenging runs. Spurs face the table-topping Gunners and second-placed Man City within four days of each other in mid-January, while Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal play four of the current top seven in their next six matches.
Tottenham’s squad appears under more strain following their greater workload at the World Cup, but Arteta will have to contend with an injury to his first-choice striker Gabriel Jesus (sustained while playing for Brazil).
On the flipside, last season’s top two Man City and Liverpool have relatively kind fixture runs in the aftermath of the World Cup. Both sides will be keen to pick up points – Guardiola’s City trail Arsenal at the top of the table and Klopp’s Liverpool are recovering from a poor start to the campaign.
Meanwhile, Aston Villa and Southampton fans can reasonably expect to see a new manager bounce, with the recently-installed Unai Emery and Nathan Jones facing bottom-half opposition in at least half of their next six matches.
Southampton’s squad also had the least involvement in Qatar, having sent only two players including one (Armel Bella-Kotchap) who remained an unused substitute throughout.
Who has been running hot … and cold?
At this stage of the season there will still be some clubs whose league position does not reflect their overall quality. This is often due to good (or bad) luck, which tends to even itself out over the rest of the season. The largest source of variance in football is finishing, where even subtle changes in the flight or bounce of a ball can be the difference between a goal and a save or a miss.
Examining the rate at which shots are being converted into goals can offer clues about who is in a false position. While the Premier League’s most clinical finishers so far – Manchester City – probably owe their ruthlessness to superior talent rather than good fortune, seeing the likes of Brentford and relegation favourites Bournemouth just behind them is more suspicious.
Given that neither side is as stacked with attacking talent as the league’s title challengers, it is reasonable to expect that both are likely to see their scoring rates decline as the season progresses.
At the other end of the spectrum, the identity of some of the division’s most wasteful finishers also suggests that bad luck may be to blame.
West Ham rank second to last despite a respectable array of attacking talent including Michail Antonio – who has reached double digits for goals in each of the last three seasons – and Jarrod Bowen, who outscored him last term.
It would therefore be no surprise to see the Hammers climb from the lowly 16th position they were languishing in when the Premier League returns.
The only side more profligate with their chances than West Ham are last-placed Wolves, who have clearly been lacking depth up top after injuries to Raul Jimenez and new signing Sasa Kalajdzic. Nevertheless, their shot conversion to date has been so pitiful that it is far more likely to increase than remain the same or worsen.
We can apply the same logic to each team’s defence by measuring the rate at which their opponents’ shots are scored. It is no surprise to see high-flying Newcastle and Arsenal among the most miserly defences by this metric, but Everton are an unexpected inclusion.
While they have England number one Jordan Pickford between the sticks, the fact that no team has faced more shots than the Toffees’ average of 16.8 per match suggests that their goal has been living something of a charmed life.
If Frank Lampard cannot stem the flow of opposition attempts then his side could be dragged into the relegation mire.
By the same token, those teams who have struggled to stop the ball flying into their net may not be entirely to blame.
Defensive injuries are likely to be at least partly responsible for Leeds’ status as the operators of the Premier League’s most porous back line, but given that they have allowed a fairly average number of shots so far and a relatively low amount of passes into their area it is likely that some unfortunate random bounces have made them look worse than they really are.
