How does the Spurs move affect Doherty in FPL(Thread)

With 23.1% ownership, Doherty is currently the 3rd most popular defender.

After a very surprising and confusing move to Spurs, how will this now impact Doherty as an FPL asset? Do we now need to rethink?

Since Mourinho came to Spurs ahead of GW13 he used Aurier as right back for the entire season. Aurier’s heatmap last season shows that he got the ball in very advanced positions, even higher up than Doherty and their stats when it comes to assist potential were extremely similar:

Aurier vs Doherty (since GW13)

Assists: 5 - 6
xA: 2.32 - 2.31
Big chances created: 3 - 2
Key passes: 24 - 17

The stats regarding goal scoring are however very different:

Aurier vs Doherty (since GW13)

Shots itb: 6 - 21
Big chances: 0 - 9
xG: 0.88 - 4.98
Goals: 1 - 3

The main factor here is Adama Traoré and that’s the main reason why I think Doherty’s stats for Spurs will change quite dramatically this season. I talked about this before in an earlier thread, mid-way trough last season: https://twitter.com/fpl_swe/status/1227590120150315011

What to expect attackingwise

So what I expect from Doherty this season will be for his goal threat to go down a bit and his assist potential to go way up this season, similar to how the 18/19 season was for him.

With one of the best finishers in the world waiting for...

his crosses, I believe that Doherty will have a big chance of getting around 6-10 assists next season while at the same time having more goal threat than Aurier did (maybe around 2-5).

What to expect defensivewise

Having talked about how the move potentially impacts Doherty positively attacking wise, let’s talk about how it may affect him negatively defensive wise. Spurs kept the 5th lowest amount of clean sheets last season with 8 compared to Wolves’ 13

Although Mourinho was the manager for 7 of those clean sheets since GW13, stats tells us that Spurs were average while Wolves was one of the absolute best. I should mention that since the restart Spurs improved a lot defensively keeping 3 clean sheets and having the 4th best xGA

Conclusion:

How this move will affect Doherty in FPL does come down to two big things in my opinion and the main one is if Spurs keep up their defensive form since the restart into this season or not.

I expect Doherty to probably have his best attacking season in the PL...

so far despite probably not playing as a wing-back anymore but it depends on if he works a bit on his finishing and how quickly he will learn and fit into the new system.

He will have full control of that right side and Kane waiting in the middle so the attacking part isn’t...

the biggest worry for me. The big thing will be how Spurs are defensively this season and if they continue like they did since the restart, I can definitely see Doherty getting up towards 160-190 points. If they don’t and fall back into being very average, I expect it to be...

more towards the 110-150 range.

The 2nd thing that I mentioned before is the question about how Doherty will fit in when he has been part of Wolves for over 10 years now. Playing in a different system and position (sort of) might take time to get used to so therefore I...

probably wouldn’t have him in my GW1 team. Instead I would wait to see how he fits in but I think he will fit the position very nicely after a while become a great option again and be a definitive upgrade from Aurier.