Who are the Premier League’s most intriguing players?

Whatever you might think about the November international break, there is one fact you simply will not be bothered to argue against: it is well timed for the statistically-minded football fan in your life. A 10-game sample size — that’s the useful stuff. At this point, many but not all teams are what their analytics tell us they are. It’s similar but not quite the same for players. Not many have hit the 900-minute mark yet but plenty are at 500-plus, a body of evidence that usually isn’t warped by any one good or bad game. Of course, it depends on how good or bad that game is.

We are not yet, then, at the stage where we can always draw hard and fast conclusions. We are, however, in a position to find some interesting questions. Here are five of them, in player form:

1. Bruno Guimaraes, Arsenal

Spend $100 million on a player who turns 29 next week and the expectation is surely that a player will hit the ground running. That’s especially true when they’re Bruno Guimaraes, terror of Premier League midfields in a Newcastle United shirt, a player who had long since seemed ready to step up to a Champions League contender. While it would be fair to say that the Brazilian’s form is nothing like a problem for table-topping Arsenal, he has not exactly started like a house on fire. Mikel Arteta has acknowledged as much whenever he has spoken about Guimaraes, even when served up the opportunity to praise him after what seemed an impressive performance against Hull City.

“He’s hitting serious levels now, but we can still take him to another level. That’s my conviction; I told him that in the dressing room — he owned a lot of moments in the game, but there is still much more to come.” It would be fair to say that, Hull aside, the best levels he has hit have been as a substitute. When he comes off the bench, he passes more accurately, wins more tackles, creates chances and scores brilliant goals. As a starter, he has occasionally looked a beat off his teammates. 

Physical data from Gradient Sports hints as to what the issue might be. For every 90 Premier League minutes on the field, Guimaraes covers less of it at sprint speed (≥25 km/h) than any outfield player bar Mikel Merino and spends notably more time jogging than anyone, an average of 30 minutes. Compare Guimaraes to Declan Rice, an admittedly vertiginous bar, and it is easy to see why the new guy looks off the pace.

Equally, it explains why he’s such a compelling substitute. When the other 21 players on the pitch are flagging, Guimaraes’ comparative physical issues go unexposed and he can run the show.

That’s all well and good for now but he can’t carry on like this, can he? You would have to assume that Myles Lewis-Skelly will have to make way even if the academy graduate’s emergence as a midfield option unlocked an improved Declan Rice at the tail end of last season. The second most expensive signing in your history can’t be an impact guy off the bench behind the homegrown kid, right? Probably not but if there’s any team that could justify the idea of Guimaraes as a 12th man, maybe it’s Arsenal, where they pride themselves on their game-changing finishers. 

2. Thierno Barry, Everton

Erling Haaland‘s Swiftian reign at the top of the Premier League xG chart has been interrupted, at least temporarily, by an unlikely source. You’d have to go back to the days of a marauding Romelu Lukaku for the last time an Everton striker looked like they might rule the roost. Only once since the Belgian’s departure has an Evertonian cleared 20 goals in all competitions. In the last five even a dozen has been beyond this club.

Thierno Barry isn’t there yet but boy is he on the right trajectory. His 7.28 non-penalty expected goals (npxG) puts him 0.22 ahead of Haaland and nearly 2.5 npxG up on anyone else in the league. Expand the pool to Europe’s top five leagues and he is breathing rarefied air behind the top four of Lamine Yamal, Donyell Malen, Raphinha and Kylian Mbappe, all of whom have the advantage that they are not playing for an upper midtable outfit in the continent’s most competitive division. And in that environment, Barry is making the hardest thing in the sport look easy: getting good shots in prime locations.

If Barry were turning them in as often as he was getting them, Everton might be even higher than sixth. Still, six goals through 10 games is not to be sniffed at, particularly when the pressure on the 24-year-old was so intense. The bungling of a deadline-day move for Folarin Balogun as Beto moved to Fiorentina meant that it was Barry or bust for David Moyes this season.

Perhaps it was an enforced show of faith for a player who was in and out of the XI last season, his first in England, that brought the best out of the former Villarreal man. His manager views the success in more straightforward terms. “He has settled down a bit more,” said Moyes after Barry’s brace helped down Coventry. “His language, his understanding, his communication is much better and he has worked hard to get himself in those positions to score.”

It is easy to see why getting the soft factors right might have been all that was required. Barry is the ideal striker for the modern Premier League. Tall, strong and mobile — he ranks third among center forwards for top speed this season, per Gradient Sports — he can serve as an outball when a press needs beating and then get in the box. He might not have the technical elegance of an Mbappe but he makes his presence felt and occupies high-value spaces. That is more valuable than it sounds, as proven when James Tarkowski‘s howitzer from range deflected in off him. You might not like it but this is what elite center forward play looks like. Long may it continue, at least as far as Everton are concerned.

3. Alex Iwobi, Fulham

There are three types of underrated footballers. First, your common-or-garden-variety underrated footballers, often to be found plying their trade at Wolverhampton Wanderers or Burnley. The Ashley Westwood in that season he put up stupidly high xA numbers. Then there are the so often dubbed underrated that they actually become a bit overrated. Leighton Baines. Lee Carsley. They don’t have to play for Everton but it does help. Olivier Giroud is another. See, not all Everton.

The most rarely spotted of the underrated is the chameleonic one, correctly pegged for a while only to develop such that he is underrated in a completely different way to how he once was. Take Alex Iwobi. Some time ago, a consensus coalesced around the Nigeria international that he was a good player for a team at Fulham‘s level (and indeed Everton’s). Any minute when he was on the field, he would probably be delivering good performances for good Premier League teams.

Not anymore. Ten games in and Iwobi looks like one of the outstanding creative forces in the Premier League, critical to the march towards adequacy that Fulham have undertaken after a slow start to life with Alvaro Arbeloa.

Among true playmakers, Iwobi is one of the best at getting the ball into dangerous areas and creating for his teammates. Iwobi leads the league in expected assists with 2.95 and is tied with Bruno Fernandes for most passes completed into the penalty area. Only Pascal Gross has created more chances.

Those players can’t match Iwobi when it comes to ball progression either. In terms of advancing the ball not just into the box but from deeper, Fulham’s ball-playing fulcrum on the inside left channel has completed more progressive passes than anyone not named Declan Rice or Jan Paul van Hecke. 

When Iwobi broke through at Arsenal, he displayed a preternatural sense for how to keep attacks alive, the pass before the pass before the pass. Now a 30-year-old, Iwobi still does that more than he unpicks defenses. One cannot argue, however, that he is not putting his teammates in the right spot. It is just that not everyone quite appreciates how often he does so just yet, including his own supporters, who jeered Iwobi when he was substituted in the early-season defeat to Crystal Palace. Since then, he has responded to his critics in style, teeing up two or more shots in each of Fulham’s last seven Premier League matches. If a few more of them had been converted, in fact, if any of them had been converted, then Iwobi might not still be underrated.

4. Enzo Fernandez, Manchester City

The upper reaches of the list of most expensive transfers of all time are hardly all bangers all the time but of the biggest money moves in the sport’s history there are only a handful where at such an early stage you find yourself wondering if anyone really understood what the plan was. Manchester City committed the best part of $150 million on Enzo Fernandez this summer, a fee only eclipsed by Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. Beyond a vague sense that it would be nice to give new manager Enzo Maresca one of his favorite players, what was it they had in mind?

We pointed out earlier in the season that the aggressive positioning of Fernandez in the 5-3 win over Sunderland looked extreme; at the time it seemed reasonable to view it as a reflection of a stretched-out, chaotic game. Maresca had, of course, unlocked more number 10-ish qualities in the Argentine at Chelsea but surely that had been reflective of what that team needed, particularly as Cole Palmer went off the boil? Perhaps not. Fernandez keeps popping up in the sort of positions that leave Elliot Anderson on an island. It is one thing to view Anderson as the new Rodri, quite another to immediately throw the England international in at the deep end, tying a whole midfield together by force of will.

Of course you could sketch out a logic for why you might push Fernandez high. It is not so long ago that City deployed two playmakers in front of a sitting midfielder and they ruled the Premier League. Fernandez and Rayan Cherki aren’t Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva though. 

Maybe Cherki could be offering a level of creation on a par with City greats; he started well enough last season. In year two, he is creating lower-quality chances, his expected assists per 90 dropping by 50%, notably more than the slight uptick in the quality and quantity of shots he is taking. It’s no surprise that Cherki is creating less when fewer of his touches are coming in the attacking third. The output has been there so far, five goals and two assists in nine Premier League games, but for that to continue, Maresca might want to be getting his No. 10 into more dangerous spots.

Instead, those seem to be going to Fernandez, who has not proven himself able to get the final-third production to justify his platforming. For every 100 touches he takes, he is delivering significantly less npxG+xA than in either of the previous two seasons. Meanwhile, he less effective without the ball than he has been at any stage since coming to England. That’s no wonder. If an opponent passes through City’s frontline, then Fernandez does not have the mobility to get back. 

As such, to enable themselves to get perhaps a shot or two more than they would get with Ayyoub Bouaddi or Mateo Kovacic next to Anderson, City have made themselves an even more vulnerable side to the counter attack, already giving up more fast-break openings than they did in 2020-21 or 2021-22. Carry on like this, and Fernandez will become one of those nine-figure transfers, the ones that live in infamy.

5. Carl Rushworth, Coventry City

It was a signing that delighted a city when it was announced in early August, and rightly so. Loaning Carl Rushworth from Brighton had been an inspired bit of business by Coventry City, the then-24-year-old goalkeeper anchoring the best defense in the division as Frank Lampard‘s side returned to the top flight for the first time in over a quarter of a century. A club-record £22 million fee seemed a snip for such a young talent.

All of that is worth bearing in mind given the struggles Rushworth has endured this season: saving just 53.7% of shots he has faced, conceding 5.19 more goals than the xG value of the shots he has faced. The swagger of last season has been replaced by a sloppiness apparent in both the goals he conceded in the second half against Tottenham, weak gloves doing nothing to repel efforts that came at him a bit quicker and a bit sooner than they might have last year.

None of this needs to be a problem for Rushworth. In 2023-24, James Trafford was another highly touted young goalkeeper afforded a shot at the big time by Burnley. He was obliterated up and down the Premier League, his first touch in the division picking the ball out of the net off Erling Haaland. Those struggles were the making of him as they have broken others. It’ll be some time yet before we discover which way these past few months send Rushworth.