Transfer Monday - PL Round-up
Last week, I was worried on behalf of Manchester United supporters that they might be leaving their transfer until too late given the volume of work they had ahead of them. Apparently they were well aware of that and had an incredibly productive weekend. Not to be out done, their Blue rivals across Manchester finally got their summer rolling with the acquisition of Raheem Sterling which appears to be a done deal. Finally, rounding out the northern flavor to the transfer window over the weekend, Newcastle started putting pens to papers and adding the sort of players who will at least give some hope that things will be improving at St. James' Park after a dismal second half of last season. Let's take a quick trip around the done (or all but done) deals and analyze their impact on the real and fantasy worlds:
Bastian Schweinsteiger to Manchester United
As far as name recognition and hype, it isn't going to get much bigger than this one. The World Cup winner is among the most successful players in the current generation of football players by any measure. The "devil's advocate" storyline has been that he's slowing down and that's why Bayern Munich was willing to sell but let's separate the business side of this deal from the on-the-pitch side before we decide he's a dried up husk of a player. Schweinsteiger is only going to be 31-years-old when the upcoming Premier League season starts. He's playing a position, deep-lying playmaker, where speed and athleticism aren't exactly paramount. He isn't going to have to play every match because Michael Carrick has just gone from injury-prone starter to exceptionally valuable reserve. Between Schweinsteiger (playing 25+ Premier League matches plus Champions League) and Carrick (10+ Premier League plus various and sundry others) both older players should have plenty of rest. Schweinsteiger has played for Van Gaal before and been successful and there's no reason to think that this wasn't a huge move for United on the pitch. Sure, he'll have next to no sell-on value as his contract winds down but United have enough money that they can absorb that hit without any trouble at all.
Fantasy Impact: Michael Carrick has never been a significant fantasy player so it isn't like he has lost a ton of value by becoming a back-up. Schweinsteiger will likely approximate Carrick's contribution from last season if you extrapolate it over a full season. He will probably contribute a few more measurable stats (goals and assists) but is probably a marginal fantasy prospect despite the profile of his name. The big value here is for Wayne Rooney, Memphis Depay and whomever else ends up playing at forward for United. Having either Carrick or Schweinsteiger igniting the attack all season rather than having to make due with Rooney as a deep lying player or Daley Blind being mediocre at the task should see an uptick in productivity over whatever you were assuming that duo was going to produce already.
Morgan Schneiderlin to Manchester United
The kit man at Old Trafford can't be happy about United's new acquisitions. Either that or he's thrilled at the extra hours he'll be racking up having to affix "Schweinsteiger" and "Schneiderlin" to the backs of all sorts of United apparel. United's second deep-lying midfield acquisition in as many days is an interesting one. No one doubts Schneiderlin's quality and he brings athleticism and youth to the base of the midfield that Carrick and Schweinsteiger don't. Schweinsteiger had Philip Lahm as a deep-lying midfield partner at Bayern last season and Schneiderlin will likely fill the same role at United this season. The only questions here are about how this plays out with the rest of the line-up. You can certainly see a world where United start Schweinsteiger and Schneiderlin at the base of midfield with Depay, Herrera and Mata in front of them with Rooney in a lone striker role ahead of them. It wouldn't be a formation that we've seen Van Gaal use frequently but it would match the current trends (Matic/Fabregas at Chelsea, Coquelin/Cazorla at Arsenal, etc.) and fit the personnel already on hand at United. With Carrick to deputize for Schweinsteiger and Blind to deputize for Schneiderlin there's a lot of potential stability there as well as some needed cover for a back line that people aren't exactly confident in at this moment.
Fantasy Impact: Like the acquisition of Schweinsteiger, the potential impact here isn't so much primary - I expect Schneiderlin to have similar numbers to what he had a Southampton last season which was OK in most fantasy formats but not great - but secondary. The United attacking players should have a much better platform to attack from than they did last season and if I'm correct about the preferred starting group in midfield and attack then Herrera and Mata would benefit from fewer defensive responsibilities in front of two deeper-lying midfielders. Rooney and Depay double down on the benefit of having Schweinsteiger mentioned above. The losers here, as they were always likely to be this summer, are Ashley Young and Marouane Fellaini who both move from regular starting roles to changes of pace off the bench. This is probably where they are both best suited at Manchester United but that doesn't change the fact that their fantasy values will be greatly diminished assuming good health for United's starters.
Matteo Darmani to Manchester United
Like I said, it was a busy few days at Old Trafford and it started with Italian international Darmani joining to improve things along the back line. The interesting thing with two of United's three moves in recent days has been that they consist of adding predominantly defensive players to the squad. Most of United's rumored right back targets - Dani Alves, Nathaniel Clyne, and Seamus Coleman - are more attack-oriented than they are defensive stalwarts but no so Darmani. Given all the press associated with LVG's attempts to move to a 3-5-2 last season and the importance of wingbacks who can both attack and defend to that alignment, the fit may seem odd. It seems most likely that Van Gaal has decided to scrap that plan, as he did for most of last season, because it didn't really fit United's personnel. In bringing in a defense-first right back as well as Schneiderlin who will likely be employed with Schweinsteiger/Schneiderlin in a two-man deep-lying midfield there is a clear move toward defensive solidity. With all the evidence pointing towards David De Gea leaving this summer (and next summer for free at the latest), this probably makes a good deal of sense. No matter who replaces De Gea, they aren't going to be as good as he was last season so it is going to fall to the defense and the holding midfielders to make up the difference just to keep United even in terms of defensive solidity. Adding two defense-first pieces should help make that happen which is good news since Schweinsteiger/Carrick aren't getting any younger and weren't dynamic tacklers/protectors of the back four even when they were younger.
Fantasy Impact: The upside for Darmani is Cesar Azpilicueta at Chelsea who is probably the right starting point for this analysis. In fantasy formats that favor defenders, like Leighton Baines or Kieran Trippier, who attack a lot as well as defend, Darmani probably isn't a great prospect. For formats like PremierLeague.com where a large chunk of a defender's value is in playing regularly and racking up clean sheets, Darmani could be a much more interesting prospect as Azpilicueta was a top ten defender in that format last season.
Raheem Sterling to Manchester City
Finally, our long international nightmare is over. Public relations textbooks could be written on how not to conduct oneself from this saga with chapters dedicated to Sterling, his agent, Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool executives, and former club legends with some room left over for media pundits who came off sounding out of touch with the modern world of transfers and/or a bit racist when discussing the concept of loyalty when it came to Sterling. I say textbooks "could" be written becuase I'm not sure that textbooks are actually written anymore so I may have lost the younger part of my audience with that reference. The move is a good one on the pitch for City who haven't been getting what they paid for from Jesus Navas and a great one off the pitch where they add a player who is actually going to play to their homegrown roles. After being snubbed by Fabian Delph, presumably because there are too many James Milner, Joleon Lescott, Scott Sinclair, Jack Rodwell, Micah Richards-type stories out there recently where a prominent English player goes to City only to see himself relegated to the bench with career-sabotaging results for both club and country. Sure, the money is good but the consequences have been severe.
For Liverpool, things don't look quite so good. Yes, the money coming in is great value for where Sterling currently is as a player. City are essentially paying as if Sterling is going to reach all of his potential when he has yet to do so. Liverpool also have moved to replace Sterling with Roberto Firmino before Sterling left so they aren't exactly in a lurch. Firmino, according to some analysts, cound end up being the better of the two players. The issue for Liverpool is that the gap between how supporters and management see the club - formed sometime before the formation of the Premier League when Liverpool were one of England's two biggest clubs - and reality continues to widen. If Arsenal supporters were upset about being a "selling club" when Henry/Vieira/Fabregas/RvP/Nasri left at least they had a long-standing run of qualifications for the Champions League and a new stadium to boost revenues to comfort themselves that a turnaround might be coming. Liverpool have been sporadic Champions League participants and have yet to firm up plans to replace/renovate Anfield in a way that can help them compete with the Premier League's elite. With Spurs closing in on a new 60,000+ seat stadium, Liverpool are closer to falling another spot down the pecking order than they are to moving back up into the Champions League spots. If Firmino does end up being better than Sterling then the way things are going we're going to see this saga play out again in a couple of summers with the Brazilian at the central figure rather than Sterling.
Fantasy Impact: We're probably getting ahead of ourselves in assuming that we have a sense of what City's starting line-up is going to look like in a little under a month when the season kicks off. Based on what we know now, we'll have to assume that little will be changed beyond Sterling arriving. If that ends up being the biggest business at the attacking end of the pitch then Sterling will probably see his value diminish marginally over last season. This isn't because he has regressed or that there's anything about City's system that will hurt him but the presence of Jesus Navas provides a legitimate alternative to Sterling that will probably see him play fewer minutes than he did at Anfield. The minutes that he is on the pitch could make up for that as he will return to being a third or fourth option in the attack behind Aguero, Silva, and Yaya Toure which is where he thrived in the 2013-14 season with Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge the primary threats for Liverpool. I guess I've talked myself into Sterling's value staying pretty much steady with fewer but more productive minutes in his future at the Etihad.
Georginio Wijnaldum to Newcastle United
I don't claim to be smart enough to figure out which Eredivisie imports are going to make the leap and prosper and which ones are going to flame out and return from whence they came with only the acquiring Premier League club's troubled by the transaction. Georginio Wijnaldum appears to be a cut below Memphis Depay in the Eredivisie pecking order. They also aren't up to the standard of Dusan Tadic at FC Twente who was about the same age when he made the move to the Premier League with at least some success. Still, with Newcastle having failed to replace Yohan Cabaye after selling him a year and a half ago and having seen Remy Cabella fail to impress in a creative midfield role after is arrival last summer, they needed to do something. Wijnaldum was supposedly on the radar at PSG which isn't a bad thing given their choices. The other important thing that he does is provide hope and a narrative for Steve McClaren and others to use as the Magpies look to attract other talent that is reportedly on their radar this summer. If Wijnaldum is the only significant move they make to bolster the attack this summer then it is likely going to be a long season on Tyneside. If this is just the first in a series of significant-for-a-midtable-team moves then there could be something brewing in the north.
Fantasy Impact: This one is a hard one to call as I mentioned above. Wijnaldum appears to be more of a poor man's Lampard in that he scores goals rather than being a replacement Cabaye (assists, free kicks, etc.). Assuming that Wijnaldum will come close to matching his 14 goals from the Eredivisie last season seems far fetched. Without a ton of assists, chances created, etc he looks like a secondary fantasy option at best even if he does transition fairly successfully. A solid analogy might be a Leon Osman type of performer when he was in his prime. Not a bad guy to have on your team but not your first choice when it comes to fantasy.
We'll rejoin our series of season previews tomorrow. Matt Nesbitt kicked us off with Norwich City yesterday and we'll feature Watford on Tuesday.
