Premier League: Worst XI of the 2022/23 season, featuring Chelsea & Arsenal stars | OneFootball

The 2022/23 Premier League is round about the halfway mark, so it’s time to take stock of what’s transpired thus far in an entirely unique and entertaining campaign.

There might still be half of the season to go, but we already know, for example, that the likes of Erling Haaland, Marcus Rashford and Martin Odegaard rank amongst the top contenders to bag the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award.

However, with every victory, there’s also a loser and with each success story, there’s more often than not a contrasting tale of difficulty. Failure, even, if you want to put it bluntly.

What is the Premier League’s lowest-rated XI?

And such is the brutality of the Premier League that we can also look at the flip side of the most recent campaign by assessing at which players have struggled to impress the most.

To do so, we’ve headed over to the data gurus at WhoScored and checked out their statistical ranking of every single player to have made a greater than average number of appearances in the Premier League this season.

From there, we’ve scrolled to the very bottom and selected the player who places the lowest in each position, thus producing the division’s ‘worst’ line-up of the season so far.

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1 of 40

We’ll start easy…

Michu Chico Flores

It just goes to show that the Premier League can be the toughest of mistresses, but rest assured that its elite nature means, in turn, that every baller in the XI can still hold their head up high as a thoroughly talented individual who’s made it to the very top of the game.

Nevertheless, the statistics don’t lie, so be sure to check out which players find themselves at the wrong end of the Premier League data so far this season.

GK: Mark Travers (Bournemouth) – 6.24

It’s been a tough, tough season for Travers, who has shipped an eye-watering 32 goals in his 11 Premier League outings for the Cherries, including all nine in that defeat to Liverpool.

RB: Tariq Lamptey (Brighton & Hove Albion) – 6.17

Not numbers that you’d expect from a thoroughly talented 22-year-old fresh from representing Ghana at the 2022 World Cup, but alas, he ranks as the lowest-rated defender in England’s top-flight this season.

CB: Lyanco (Southampton) – 6.30

A bout of second-season-syndrome seems to be going on here as the Saints defender boasts just one clean sheet from his 12 Premier League outings this term.

CB: Marcos Senesi (Bournemouth) – 6.32

With two penalties conceded and 10 instances of miscontrolling the ball this season, Senesi always gives you an uneasy feeling that a mistake is never too far away, and the statistics provide little in the way of a counterargument.

LB: Kieran Tierney (Arsenal) – 6.26

Woah, we did not see this one coming. It’s no secret that Oleksandr Zinchenko is looking like the future for Arsenal at left-back, but has Tierney really been that poor for the table-toppers?

RW: Harry Wilson (Fulham) – 6.16

All that early excitement surrounding Wilson and his penchant for screamers seems to be fizzling out as the Wales baller still awaits his first league goal contribution of the season.

CM: Mateusz Klich (Leeds United) – 6.12

We’re not entirely sure what’s been so ropey about Klich’s 14 substitute appearances in the Premier League this season, but the statistics have clearly not been fond of his contributions. He’s since moved on to DC United.

CM: Will Hughes (Crystal Palace) – 6.09

The lowest-rated player in the entire Premier League so far this season. Poor Hughes has treble the amount of yellow cards as he does starts.

LW: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Chelsea) – 6.16

In the interest of transparency, Carlos Vinicius and Joe Gelhardt are both ranked slightly lower, but it’s Aubameyang who takes the spot as the only one of the three to have substantial experience on the left, too. He’s scored just one league goal in Chelsea blue.

ST: Kelechi Iheanacho (Leicester City) – 6.14

Iheanacho’s Leicester career has been a constant story of ups and downs, and unfortunately for Brendan Rodgers, 2022/23 has definitely marked a trough with the Nigerian bagging just one goal and starting only once.

ST: Patrick Bamford (Leeds United) – 6.14

With nine big chances missed and just a single goal to his name this season, Bamford’s injury-interrupted run since that glorious 17-goal haul of 2020/21 has slammed the brakes on his flourishing career.

The biggest observation: just look at the talent.

The amount of internationals and top-class stars populating the XI not only tells you just how tough the Premier League truly is, but should also reassure us all that these under-performing stars will bounce back in good time.

We can’t wait to see them all prove the statistics wrong when the time comes.

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