October in review - and a look ahead

It’s a new month in the Premier League, and therefore time for our retro on October…and a look ahead to November.

For starters, here’s the October team of the month!

Our usual caveats apply…

We keep a two players per team quota in place
We keep formation considerations too – most of the higher-scoring players are strikers, but that wouldn’t be a team!
Where there are ties for points and neither of the above apply, we make a subjective judgement

All of which means some players do miss out despite similarly effective points totals. But never fear, for we will now give them the exposure that the names above have…

Goalkeeper

It’s bad luck for Dean Henderson and Aaron Ramsdale who, like Ben Foster, also picked up eight points last month.

But with Foster’s Watford having such a calamitous start to the season, his performances to bring back some credibility (two clean sheets in three October games) got him our nod.

Midfielder

Sadio Mane ended the month with eight points – as did Pascal Gross – but with the latter being critical to his Brighton side’s unlikely wins against Everton and Tottenham, he fully deserved his spot.

Striker

Aston Villa’s Wesley Moraes earned his place alongside Jamie Vardy – but it could have also been Marcus Rashford or Aaron Connolly.

But Villa were terrific this month, particularly in beating Norwich 5-1 away, and their young Brazilian forward was instrumental.

Now here’s a fact for you, and one that emphasises at once the unpredictability and competitiveness of the Premier League.

In the three team of the months we’ve had so far, there hasn’t been a single player that has featured in more than one.

As we look ahead to November then, it’s time to get out the crystal ball.

To help, we have once again run our ‘fixture difficulty’-ometer.

In this, playing each team is given a difficulty rating (home and away) and the cumulative results show who has the easiest or hardest upcoming run during the month (the below also includes fixtures on Dec 1st)

Basically, the lower the number, the easier the fixtures.

Team	Difficulty rating
Manchester United	85
Burnley	115
Tottenham Hotspur	125
Wolverhampton Wanderers	125
Arsenal	130
Watford	150
Everton	165
Liverpool	165
Leicester City	170
Newcastle United	175
Norwich City	180
Chelsea	195
AFC Bournemouth	210
Sheffield United	210
West Ham United	210
Brighton & Hove Albion	215
Aston Villa	225
Manchester City	225
Crystal Palace	240
Southampton	245

So, should we expect Man Utd to climb from their current lowly position of 10th?

Well, whilst the above scores have some science, they are still indicative. And with some teams seeming to prefer playing ‘bigger’ sides, where they can sit deep with counterattacking tactics (cf. Solskjaer’s tactics vs Liverpool last month), it’s worth applying your own lens to this as well.

Lastly we’ll sign off as usual with your ‘five to watch’ for the month, with one player per position.

Pos.	Who	Why?
GK	Kasper Schmeichel	Has formed the joint-meanest defence in the league thus far, whose effectiveness Brendan Rodgers is still working on
FB	Kieran Tierney	Finally fit, the Scot should keep getting better the more games he plays
CB	Harry Maguire	The easiest run of fixtures ahead (nominally!) should see the big man pick up some clean sheets
MF	Jack Grealish	It’s taken some time but he is flying now in the top flight. A difficult run of games ahead, but his Villa side seem to play better when given space to run into
ST	Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang	It might be ups and downs at the Emirates, but the one constant is the Gabonese’s goals, which don’t look like drying up