Trent Alexander-Arnold seems to be a staple in most teams at the moment. With over 23% ownership at the time of writing this post he is the second highest owned defender in the game behind only Luke Shaw.
Ben Chilwell on the other hand has been flying under the radar with only 13% total ownership. Chilwell had the third-most goals scored by a defender in the league last season which is great considering he only played in 27 games out of 38 last season.
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At first I would like to weigh out the pros and cons of both these players.
Trent Alexander-Arnold
1. Pros
Nailed first team place
Very offensive fullback
Joint most assists by a defender last season
2. Cons
Very expensive and limits spend in other positions
Got injured at the end of last season
Ben Chilwell
1. Pros
Relatively affordable
Chelsea had the second best defence last season
Joint third-most goals scored by a defender last season
2. Cons
Has to compete with Marcos Alonso for the LWB spot
Let’s talk stats
Trent Alexander-Arnold scored a total of 160 points last season. That takes his points/million tally to 21.33. On the other hand Ben Chilwell scored a total of 139 points taking his points/million tally to 23.16 marginally beating Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Talking about football stats, TAA accumulated an xG of 2.8 and an xA of 8.1 of which he scored 2 and set up another 7 goals. Ben Chilwell accumulated an xG of 2.4 and an xA of 2.8. He scored 3 goals and set up a further 5 goals being among the very few Chelsea players over-performing their expected stats. In terms of stats going forward TAA has the upper-hand although it is worth considering that Chilwell played a lot lesser games as compared to him.
Now, Chilwell was a part of a defence that was the second-best defence throughout last season and the best since Tuchel took over. On the other hand Liverpool’s defence was rather shaky last season. In terms of points from clean-sheets Chilwell clearly has the upper-hand.
Other factors to consider
One can clearly see that TAA has a higher ceiling for points when it comes to points through goals and assists but when it comes to clean-sheets Chilwell definitely is a part of a better defence.
But, other than stats and a pros and cons list there are other factors to consider while choosing your pick.
Chelsea might sell Alonso and/or Emerson which might lead to Ben Chilwell having lesser competition for the LWB spot and playing more minutes.
The return of Van Dijk and signing of Konate from Leipzig will definitely reinforce the Liverpool defence.
TAA’s underperformance in xA has been partly because of lack of good finishing by the Liverpool side. Liverpool did accumulate the highest non-penalty xG last season but ranked just fourth for actual goals. Other than that, questions like “Will Chelsea stick to a back three formation?”, “Will Van Dijk be as good as he was before the injury?'“ and fixtures, injuries, etc will all affect their points tally at the end of this FPL season.
Conclusion
Predicting which one of them will score higher points is an impossible task. Although I do believe Chilwell has the potential to outdo the Liverpool fullback duo in terms of FPL points this season.
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