Mendy in nets and Leicester forwards feature in the Premier League weekend’s worst XI
No prizes for guessing the goalkeeper who must brazenly stunk the place out this week, but there are a few surprises further forward with Newcastle and Brighton players among those involved.
Here’s the worst team of the Premier League weekend according to Whoscored ratings…
GK: Edouard Mendy – 5.92
The WhoScored lads are definitely getting more generous in their old age. Five-point-something ratings are going the way of white dog turds, soon to exist only in what would surely in commercial terms prove disastrously niche Peter Kay “Who remembers…” routines. Hats off, then, to Edouard Mendy who managed a 5.92 for his hilarious one-man blooper reel at Leeds. Just get it sent, lad.
RB: Aaron Hickey – 6.20
I mean, look at that. A 6.2 is nothing to shout about for sure, but it’s an unlucky right-back who finds himself in this team on the back of such a score. Must have been a vintage weekend for right-backs but not everyone is Kieran Trippier, surely. Did get the runaround from Bobby Decordova-Reid, mind, in what would have been one of the standout games in a regular weekend of Barclays but was maybe only fourth or fifth best in this vintage round of nonsense.
LB: Jordan Zemura – 6.25
Was actually playing left wing-back but he’s not getting out of this side on that technicality. It’s one thing for Bournemouth to be swept aside by Arsenal in that kind of mood, but allowing Ben White – a fine centre-back for sure but no more than a capable stand-in at right-back – to go full Trent Alexander-Arnold is precisely the sort of things the WhoScored algorithm should quite rightly punish.
CB: Thilo Kehrer – 6.05
David Moyes can’t pronounce his name and the WhoScored boffins don’t much care for him either. And you have to say fair enough. Not the bit with the name. The bit with the boffins. Thrust straight into action by his confused and defensively-bereft manager, Kehrer promptly conceded a penalty within 20 minutes to set West Ham on their way to a third straight defeat. To be fair to the German, we imagine that hearing the manager who can’t pronounce your name declare pre-match on live TV that you’re in the starting XI because “needs must” isn’t exactly a great confidence-instiller.
CB: Sven Botman – 6.16
Produced one of the standout moments of what already looks sure to be one of the best games of the season when, with Newcastle attempting to run down the clock at 3-3 against Manchester City, he hoofed the ball directly into the face of his own team-mate Dan Burn. This was a genius move, both taking time out of the game and also inflicting a potential injury on a key rival for a place at the heart of Eddie Howe’s fun-time Newcastle defence. Also a sign that Newcastle new boy Botman is a keen student of Toon history, with his high-velocity hoof a clear nod to the classic Laurent Robert-Olivier Bernard incident. Great stuff all round, but after 95 minutes desperately trying to cope with Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne et al what does the computer do? Gives him a stinking 6.16. Bah.
CM: Ben Pearson – 6.03
Lord knows that first half against Arsenal was tough for everyone in a Bournemouth shirt, but few others were as pointedly uninvolved in it all as Pearson, whose performance was essentially a statistical black hole in a position where really you ought to be quite heavily involved one way or another. While the total absence of anything in any of the attacking columns is understandable given the way the game was going, you might expect a bit of activity in the more defensive criteria. One tackle, one clearance, three fouls. It’s not a great afternoon’s work, is it? Chuck in five inaccurate passes from a grand total of 13 attempted and losing the ball twice and the only mystery is how the algo didn’t hammer him more. Scott Parker had seen enough anyway, putting Pearson out of his misery at half-time and bringing on Lewis Cook who at least managed to find a red and black shirt with 95.5% of his 22 passes in the less harrowing second half.
CM: Harrison Reed – 6.11
Seems harsh, but sometimes a busy and energetic nuisance of a performance doesn’t rack up points. Especially if it’s combined with three shots off target and a below-par passing accuracy. Not sure Reed or Fulham will worry too much. They definitely shouldn’t.
AM: Jesse Lingard – 5.97
Forest and Lingard clearly being hit hard in the ‘classlessness’ category over making a number of summer signings deemed offensive to the sort of people who spent most of last season complaining that Norwich were wasting a place in the division by not even bothering to try and stay in it. Still, though, Lingard’s performance had little to recommend it statistically: no shots, a pass accuracy below 80% and a solitary key pass in 83 minutes at Goodison.
AM: Adam Lallana – 6.00
Another performance where it’s a lack of anything to catch the eye of the judges that does for you, Lallana here paying the price for attempting no shots, no crosses, producing only one key pass and picking up zero defensive actions in an hour of football where Brighton were pretty good. To the easily tricked and analytically useless naked eye, you’d still have fingered Said Benrahma as the conspicuously underperforming AM in this game, but you and your eyes are damn fools.
AM: Harvey Barnes – 6.05
With early-season crisis enveloping a record-breaking number of Premier League clubs in what is already promising to be another truly bonkers season of Barclays, the low-key malaise that has gripped Leicester is in its way the most depressingly grim. There is at least something bold and dramatic about Manchester United’s disasters or West Ham’s shambling. Leicester, who have been such great fun under Brendan Rodgers, are just kind of… nothing. And given that their defence is, and this is a technical term, absolutely f***ing sh*t, the fact that two of their brightest attacking players are making this XI is a bit of a worry.
Leicester’s season currently appears to hinge entirely on whether your Barneses, your Maddisons and the Jamie Vardys of this world can bail out the defensive sh*tshow often enough to make things palatable. So far, the signs are very bad indeed. One out of three is bad.
ST: Jamie Vardy – 6.06
Too many more games where Jamie Vardy has 11 touches, one shot (off target) and completes two of the four passes he attempts and Leicester’s situation is going to become grave indeed. His biggest statistical contribution to Leicester’s miserable 2-1 home defeat to Southampton was a couple of clearances. Yuk.
