Jean-Philippe Mateta

You've got Ismael Assir, who doesn't want to be there.

You've got Mateta, who doesn't wanna be there, and is currently challenging his contract.

So, you know, there's a, there's a lot of upheaval and a lot of question marks and a, and a lack of ambition, I think.

I, I don't like when clubs end the summer with a, with a, you know, a transfer profit unless they have to because of financial constraints.

And that's the sec- it's his second torn ACL.

So I mean, if he's...

Will he ever be the player we thought he could be when he, when he first kinda came onto the scene a few years back? Mateta is injured.

Um, we, we don't know what the injury is.

It's almost as if he worked us out, but then he also had the up- the upper hand on us how to, you know, how to beat us as such.

Um, whether that's the case now, you know, when he had Mateta, we used to struggle against Mateta, who's great in both boxes.

You know, so he always, they, they did always have the upper hand.

Um, whether he's got, you tell me, it's, you know, in terms of similar dynamics, in terms of, you know, the, the personnel-

Yeah.

I think he's looking to, he's looking to replicate it.

Yeah, I mean, k- we've got Delap, he's Mateta.

It's...

You've got Ismail Assar, who doesn't want to be there.

You've got Mateta, who doesn't want to be there and is currently challenging his contract.

So, you know, there's a lot of upheaval and a lot of question marks and a lack of ambition, I think.

I don't like when clubs end the summer with a, you know, a transfer profit unless they have to because of financial constraints.

Yeah, torn ACL, unfortunately.

That's his second torn ACL.

So, I mean, will he ever be the player we thought he could be when he first kind of came onto the scene a few years back? Mateta is injured.

We don't know what the injury is.

He plays with a structure he's quite comfortable with and players seem to get quite comfortable in it from a defensive perspective.

Then he works his magic with a Mateta or whoever may be, you know, to bring out that, focal point up front to then get the goals, that platform, the structure that's working really well behind them.

So we'll see whether or not Forrest are able to achieve that in this game.

I think the concern for me is for Aston Villa.

Yeah, I know they're looking forward to bouncing back.

I know they're missing Saar and Jean-Philippe Mateta at the moment.

Both currently injured.

I think Saar is kind of close to being back, but Mateta...

So if he was on par with his underlying data model, he would have scored about five and two thirds points fewer than he actually got.

And then on the flip end, if you sort that the other way and you look at the most negative values first, Mateta has scored 5.3 points per match under his underlying data model.

So, and he had, oh, he has only played the one match as well.

So in that match, he created chances for himself that if he, if points were determined by the chances he created and not the chances he actually took, he would have scored 5.35 points more.

So those are the midfielders.

Let's jump over to the forwards and out of the forwards who underperformed, there are a couple that are pretty shocking.

So Mateta has underperformed by 5.35 points per match.

He only played the one match, so he missed some big chances in that game.

Obviously, the manager's trying to get his thoughts through.

but they've got a decent squad and let's not forget Craig that Palace team was without two players who they sensibly kept as well Mateta and Sarr are due to come back for that team as well so when they do come back against an Ipswich team Craig who we like I think

they've started well Graham

yeah Again, but Craig, as much as we like Ipswich...

That sounds really...

I don't want to sound disrespectful Graham I really don't but I think if they go to Palace and play for a point they can probably get one but I think they're going to go and try and win they're going to lose 2-1 2-1 Palace

I think if Mateta and Sarri are involved, I said, I'll change back.

I'm going 3-0.

But then they're then having to, that's too quite, sorry, that's then quite an important player they're missing from last year.

They then obviously going with Eddie and Ketia up top as well at the moment with the whole Mateta situation too.

that's again two very crucial players for them last season out of the side they've already lost the likes of someone like Lacroix who was absolutely crucial Chadiria bless him has had another bad injury towards him after again I think he looked pretty good in that game there's a lot there's a lot of changes then moved on from a new manager uh Daniel Munoz another key player has gone as well but I actually think um Kalali uh right back right wing back has been pretty good

yeah um Do you know what? Last year, you could pick Palace's starting 11 every single week and you could say exactly what substitutes they were going to use.

And what's really good to see is we've got six goals in this week.

without Mateta and Saar and that was just huge no matter who scored them we've just proved that we can get a fair few goals and I think under Glasner would that have happened not too sure it definitely wouldn't have been six goals scored in these last two games with the squad that we had um so it'll be really interesting and it's six goal contributions or five goal contributions from our fullbacks in the last two games um so it just does just show how much Sarge relies on them.

And the full and third goal we spoke about, Chilwell and Kalali in the box for that, like the attacking box for that.

And then against Barra, Chilwell and Mingueza getting the crosses in, which was really nice to see because Stranlarsson dealt with them perfectly and got the two goals.

Because one constant theme that we kept bringing up last season, people might remember, is that it always felt like when Strand Larsson came on, he had the kind of B team around him.

providing him with opportunities.

Whereas Mateta would be on, have hundreds of opportunities provided to him and he'd miss all of them.

Or he'd miss three, four of them a game.