The Wonderkid Power Rankings: Arsenal and Southampton starlets soar as latest top ten lands

Every week, we watch the tape, dig through the stats, add a dash of our writers’ opinions, and combine them to come up with the Wonderkid Power Rankings – our attempt to track the performances of the best young players in the Premier League.

For the past three weeks, Bournemouth’s Dean Huijsen has held on to top spot after some startlingly good showings for the Cherries – and also because quite a few top talents simply haven’t been able to string together the kind of consistent form required to challenge him. Will that change this week?

We’ve got two players from last week’s Top 10 dropping out - Rodrigo Gomes is nudged out after he missed out on Wolves’ match day squad, while Nico O’Reilly’s nod for an excellent outing in the FA Cup didn’t earn him more than the briefest of cameos at the end of Manchester City’s 4-0 thrashing of Newcastle. Their absence does, at least, leave room for two players to reclaim spots in the rankings, so without further ado, let’s see who’s made this week’s list…

10. Carlos Baleba – Brighton & Hove Albion (re-entry)

The Cameroonian midfielder has bounced in and out of our countdown over the course of the season and a big defensive shift in a 3-0 thumping of Chelsea earns him his place back once more – Baleba racked up an impressive eight turnovers to keep the Blues at arm’s length and while his passing wasn’t at its best, he had an impactful match nevertheless as the Seagulls beat Enzo Maresca’s side for the second time in a week.

9. Yankuba Minteh – Brighton & Hove Albion (RE)

There are valid questions about whether Minteh is really right for the wing-back role, given that he was dribbled past a whopping four times over the course of the match against Chelsea, but you can’t question his impact in the final third, or his composure. He kept his head well to guide a loose ball home for the first of his two goals on Friday evening and showed some skill and improvisation to work his way into the box for his second, sending Marc Cucurella one way and then the other before drilling home via a deflection. The Gambian has been inconsistent this season but when he’s on, he’s really on.

8. Myles Lewis-Skelly – Arsenal (⬇️3)

It feels rather harsh to drop Lewis-Skelly three whole places after his outing against Leicester City because while he wasn’t at his very best, you’d be hard pressed to say he was bad – but other players shone just that little bit brighter to displace him from the top five. The young left-back did his defensive work well enough and saved a certain goal when he turned a cross destined for Bobby Decordova-Reid behind but did show some weakness in one-on-one situations and couldn’t get much going when coming forward, either with the ball at his feet or with his passing. Not a bad game, by any means, but probably not one that he’ll tell his kids about in years to come.

7. Lucas Bergvall – Tottenham Hotspur (-)

In the first half of Tottenham’s 1-0 win over Manchester United, Bergvall was superb, always finding space, keeping the ball safe and finding the next man with grace and ease, and he even picked up a ‘sort-of assist’ when his shot was palmed into the path of James Maddison – the statisticians don’t count those, but he still generated the chance. In the second half, however, as Spurs found their control of the game sliding a little, Bergvall was substituted to bring some fresh legs into midfield after finding himself less able to get hold of the ball, so he ends up staying put in the bottom half of our Top 10.

6. Milos Kerkez – Bournemouth (⬇️3)

The Hungarian wing-back hasn’t been at his very best in the last few weeks and our former number one is starting to slide down the table – and another slightly off-kilter display against Southampton pushes him out of the top five. He didn’t manage to make a single tackle all game, was beaten on the run on a couple of occasions and failed to spark attacks with his usually accurate long-range passing. An off day, not that it did Bournemouth much harm as they ran out 3-1 winners against a doomed-looking Southampton side.

5. Ethan Nwaneri – Arsenal (⬆️4)

One Arsenal player who’s definitely trending upwards is 17-year-old Nwaneri, who will get a lot of minutes in the coming weeks given the Gunners’ laundry list of injuries – and who is taking his chance to impress in the first team stunningly well.

A lovely cross for Mikel Merino set the opening goal up, and he came achingly close to scoring himself, smashing the woodwork twice and firing a 20-yard effort fractionally over. It’s the ease with which he can beat a man that really stands out, though, and his combination of guile and goal threat makes him look like a truly colossal prospect. Arsenal have a lot of problems up front but in Nwaneri, they also have a solution.

4. Savinho – Manchester City (⬆️2)

It’s fair to say that Savinho can be pretty frustrating at times. A winger who is always looking for a direct route to goal, he often dribbles when he should probably pass and doesn’t quite have the consistency in front of goal to shoot as often as he does – a very presentable first-half chance which he sidefooted straight at Martin Dúbravka providing a case in point.

But on the other hand, his combination of speed and incisive movement means he finds so much space and so many chances that the end product is often there, and he did extremely well to burst into the open field down the right flank and tee up Omar Marmoush’s hat-trick goal. As long as the goal contributions keep ticking up, Savinho’s downside won’t matter half as much.

3. Lewis Hall – Newcastle United (⬇️1)

Hall got a real working over by Savinho this weekend, but while the Brazilian winger came out on top when it comes to the final result, Hall won most of their battles and the young England international probably did as much as anyone in black and white to stop the scoreline from turning into something more suited to a cricket match.

Hall wasn’t perfect and did get beaten once or twice, including getting caught out of position for the third goal, but he still put in a solid performance and did a decent amount of good work going forward on the occasions when Newcastle managed to get the ball down and play for a bit, with some nice passing and movement. He’ll want to forget this game quickly, but it wasn’t Hall’s fault that it all went wrong at the Etihad.

2. Mateus Fernandes – Southampton (⬆️2)

The Saints may be going down with a whimper at this rate, but getting to watch Fernandes play every week must be at least some consolation for their supporters – once again, Southampton lost but the summer signing proved himself to be a truly exciting talent, and one who plays well week in, week out even when the team around him is in a state of disrepair.

His passing wasn’t at its very best this week, so we didn’t quite see the full range of his abilities in the defeat to Bournemouth, but there were several surging runs with the ball that outlined his attacking threat and his work out of possession – 10 successful ground duels and four completed tackles are the headline stats – is just as impressive. A genuine do-it-all midfielder who will surely be on several clubs’ radars if (let’s be honest, when) Southampton get relegated.

1. Dean Huijsen – Bournemouth (-)

Make it four weeks on the bounce at the top of the leaderboard for the Amsterdam-born centre-back following another rock-solid defensive showing against Southampton in which he wasn’t tested too hard but did all the work he needed to with minimal fuss.

His positional sense is really starting to stand out and he has that knack that many of the best defenders share of seeming to be in the right place every time the ball is played into the box – and while his distribution wasn’t quite as sharp as it normally is, he has a direct passing game which contributes a lot to Bournemouth’s capacity to spring counter-attacks. An amazingly impressive young player who is starting to be linked with all the biggest clubs… even Real Madrid are meant to be interested, and with good reason.