Fantacalcio: the fifth matchday accounts, and a defender nobody watches

The method is always the same and fits in three lines. You add up the chances a player creates for himself and those he serves to his teammates, you compare the total with the real goals and assists, and you look at the difference. Whoever produces and does not collect is in credit. Whoever collects without producing is in debt.

The house rule is that the accounts are kept in public even when they do not add up. On Thursday we wrote nine names, and here is what became of them after the Friday and Saturday matches. The teams playing on Sunday stay out of the tally: we will look at them next week.

What we said, and how it ended

Lautaro Martínez was at the top of the credit list, with 2 goals from almost 3 worth of chances. At the Olimpico he shot five times for 1.38 expected goals and scored the goal that reopened the match. Credit collected, for the second week in a row.

Hakan Calhanoglu was the biggest debt, 2 goals from 0.09 of production. In the same match he did not shoot even once. Debt confirmed, and the season account stays as it is: 3 shots, 2 goals, 0.09 expected goals. It is the biggest gap in Serie A and it will stay that way for a long time.

Marcus Thuram and Francesco Pio Esposito were the other two Inter credits. Thuram shot three times without scoring, Esposito made no impact: their season numbers remain those of two forwards who produce more than they collect, so the credit stays open.

Donyell Malen, whom we had flagged as the player with neither credit nor debt, did exactly the thing we expected from a player in balance: three shots, no goals, nothing strange. For the season he is on 5 goals from 5.03 expected goals, the most perfect coincidence in the league.

And then there are the two we got wrong.

The two mistakes, and they are heavy

Paulo Dybala was our strongest pick for the fifth matchday. We had written it plainly: the biggest credit in the league, in a match with plenty of balls into the box.

He shot four times for 0.23 expected goals, he served four chances to his teammates for 0.73, and none of those turned into goals. Zero bonus, again. For the season we are at 18 shots and zero goals, with 1.86 personal expected goals and 20 chances served for 4.21: he remains the leading chance creator in Serie A, by a wide margin, and he remains dry.

Armand Lauriente is the second mistake, and it is more annoying because we have been flagging him for three weeks. At Monza he shot three times for 0.11 expected goals in total. For the season: 19 shots, zero goals, 1.72 of expected production. The credit is not being collected and in the meantime the shot volume has dropped.

The honest tally for the week is five names that landed and two that went wrong, with two postponed to Sunday. The point is not the percentage: it is that the two mistakes concern the players we had insisted on the most, and that credit, when it is not collected for three matchdays in a row, starts to become something else.

When a credit stops being a credit

It is worth saying, because it is the real limit of this method.

A credit gets collected if three things remain: the minutes, the shot volume and the team that creates. Dybala has all three, so his case remains a matter of time. Lauriente, in these two matchdays, has lost the second one: without shots, the credit is just an old number.

It is the difference between a forward who misses his chances and a forward who no longer has them. The first one comes back, the second one does not, and in the numbers the distinction shows up by looking at shots per match, not the season total.

The gem: Serie A's fourth-best creator is a defender

If you sort Serie A players by expected goals created, meaning how much the chances they served to their teammates were worth, at the top there is Paulo Dybala with 4.21. Then Mattia Zaccagni with 1.89, Federico Dimarco with 1.87.

Fourth, with 1.85, there is Gianluca Mancini.

A centre-back, with five passes that generated chances in five matches, for an average of 0.37 expected goals each. It is the highest value per chance among the league's top ten: the others serve many balls and some of them dangerous, he serves very few and almost all of them are good.

Two of those five plays turned into goals, and a third is the 0.450 effort from the right that Roma wasted against Inter. He is not a creator in the classic sense: they are long balls that skip over midfield and vertical openings from inside his own half, the kind of pass that leaves no trace in normal statistics if the teammate does not score.

For fantacalcio it means one thing only, and it is not trivial: a defender who generates 0.37 expected goals per completed pass is a serious candidate for an assist on any matchday, and he is priced like any ordinary centre-back.

The honest point

We do not have the ratings and fantavoti: our collection stops at last season, so here we reason on shots, expected goals and chances served, not on the tenths of the sports daily.

And there is the usual limit of the sample. Five matchdays are, for a forward, fifteen or twenty shots: enough to see a trend, not enough to be right. This column does not say who will score on Sunday, it says who is playing better than his haul tells you. Then there are matchdays like Dybala's, where the play is there and the bonus is not.

The next tally comes after matchday six, and it will also include the names left hanging this Sunday.

T.L.

Do you want to see how much each team really deserves its league position? The Meritometro compares real points and expected points. For those who want the models and not the headlines, there is the Nerd Zone.