The damning stats which tell FPL players to sell Bournemouth's Antoine Semenyo before they face Chelseaplaceholder image
The damning stats which tell FPL players to sell Bournemouth's Antoine Semenyo before they face Chelsea | Getty Images
Antoine Semenyo is suddenly struggling for form - so is time for Fantasy Premier League players to move on?
Ever since he started the season off with a rather brilliant brace at Anfield, Antoine Semenyo has been in the headlines. Most of the Premier League’s wealthiest teams seemingly want to sign him – and the majority of Fantasy Premier League managers have put him in their teams, too. But is it time for FPL players to move on from Semenyo after a worrying barren run?
After scoring six goals and providing three assists in his first seven games, the Ghanaian winger has drawn a near complete blank since – five consecutive matches in which he has gone without a goal and with only one assist to his name, and even that was an ‘FPL assist’ against Sunderland, one which he was not credited with by most statisticians. Semenyo seems to have gone off the boil.
But is this just a brief blip from which he will recover? Or a more accurate reflection of the number of points his owners can expect to earn from him moving forward? We delved into the stats to work out whether it’s time to sell ahead of Tuesday’s Gameweek 14 deadline.
Just how worrying are Antoine Semenyo’s FPL stats?
In terms of the underlying numbers, the difference between Semenyo’s first seven games of the 2025/26 campaign and his last five matches is worryingly stark.
In his first seven matches of the season, the 25-year-old scored six goals from 16 shots with a combined xG of 3.7. Since then, it’s zero goals from eight shots worth a total xG value of 1.1 – and the vast majority of that was the penalty that he missed against Aston Villa. From open play, he has been next to a non-factor in terms of troubling the opposing goalkeeper. Just four of those eight shots were on target.
It's even worse in terms of creating chances for others. Between the 2-1 win over Brighton back in mid-September and the recent international break, he was credited with zero expected assists - although, oddly, one of his ‘official’ assists has come since then, a statistical quirk caused by the minuscule chance of Justin Kluivert scoring from distance after Semenyo’s pass resulting in the xG being rounded down to 0.
Even in terms of his involvement in the build-up towards shooting chances for others, the winger has fallen off a cliff. Between Gameweeks 2 and 5, he went on a four-match streak in which he was directly involved in creating at least five chances every game, even if he wouldn’t have earned the assist for them. Between Gameweeks 6 and 12, he was involved in just 11 moves which ended with a shot on goal by Bournemouth.
In short, Semenyo simply has not been imposing himself on games since the 3-1 win over Fulham at the beginning of October, during which game he scored twice and created Kluivert’s brilliant goal. The stats aren’t just below par, they’re downright poor, and certainly not worth £7.8m in FPL, his current price after players started panic selling him over the last few weeks.
Looking at his stats from previous seasons, his form falling away rather tallies with his past productivity. Over the course of his three prior seasons at Bournemouth, he has consistently scored at a rate of almost exactly one goal for every three full matches he plays – and only has a total of seven assists.
In short, for him to maintain his early-season production, which was better than twice as strong as it has ever been in his career, he would have had to have taken a massive step forward in his development as a player, and keeping him in your FPL team with the expectation that he will get back to that kind of form requires you to believe that he has done so. Based on recent performances, that’s a bit of a leap – and the statistical signs are that he is regressing back to the mean, as most players and teams eventually do when they hit a hot streak.
Should you sell Semenyo in Gameweek 14 - and if not, when?
For all of that, there were some green shoots in the 3-2 defeat to Sunderland last weekend. He got three shots on goal away at the Stadium of Light and was involved in the creation of six chances with a total of 0.7 expected assists against a genuinely impressive defence. He could easily have picked up a few points.
Those still aren’t necessarily the numbers of a £7.8m midfielder, but at least they was a reminder that he’s a very good player in there. But is that the start of another red hot run of form?
Next up for Bournemouth is Everton – a team with the fifth highest expected goals allowed total, who just lost 4-1 at home, and who are playing with a makeshift right-back for Semenyo to torment. If ever there was a ‘get right’ game for Semenyo – and perhaps for Bournemouth as a whole - it’s this one.
In short, joining the herd and selling Semenyo if you’re among the 52.5% of players who still have him probably isn’t the best play. He may well come good in Gameweek 14. The problem is that it’s his best chance for a while.
Over the course of December, Bournemouth play Chelsea twice, have away trips to Manchester United and Brentford, and the only game any sensible manager would really target is a home match against Burnley. Semenyo’s expectations for Fantasy points will tail away quite sharply from this coming weekend regardless of his form.
The likely conclusion is that Semenyo’s early season from was never truly sustainable, and the data suggests that keeping hold of him expecting those kind of returns for the rest of the campaign just doesn’t look like a plan that’s likely to bear fruit – but equally, this isn’t the gameweek in which to sell him. After Everton, however, it’s probably time to say goodbye.
If a stronger side than Bournemouth signs him in January, then it will certainly be interesting to see what kind of impact that has on his output - and none of this is to say that Semenyo isn’t a brilliant player. It’s just that from a Fantasy Premier League perspective, there are probably better uses of all that money right now, and that may not change until the New Year.
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