The Wonderkid Power Rankings: Man City, Aston Villa & Leicester starlets in hunt for number one

Welcome back to our weekly Wonderkid Power Rankings, in which the staff at 3 Added Minutes cobble together a top ten from the best and most in-form young players in the Premier League.

This isn’t just about which players are actually the best or have the most potential, but about the under-21s who are playing well right now at the very top level of the game – and last week, our rankings were topped by Manchester City winger Savinho after a sterling start to his career in sky blue. But with the Brazilian missing out through injury this week, will he be knocked off top spot?

Before we find out, we need to say a temporary farewell to two players from last week’s top ten, both from Bournemouth – Milos Kerkez didn’t have a great game against Everton, while Alex Scott has been absolutely fine but bouncing off the bench every now and again means that other players have edged ahead of him. Once he gets back in the starting line-up, he’ll surely be a regular feature based on what we’ve seen. Anyway, on with the latest rankings…

10. Adam Wharton – Crystal Palace (⬇️1)

This is us putting Wharton on notice. He hasn’t had a terrible start to the season by any means, but he was a long way from his gritty and influential best in the 1-1 draw with Chelsea, losing out in almost all of his one-on-one battles and finding himself beaten on the run five times, which is very uncharacteristic indeed. There were still a few good long balls in there, and he was just fine during his cameo appearance against Norwich City in the League Cup, but if he plays like he did at Stamford Bridge then he’ll lose his place in this list as well as his spot in the England squad. We leave it up to him to decide which matters most.

9. Pape Matar Sarr – Tottenham Hotspur (new entry)

The Senegalese midfielder spent a fair amount of time in the top ten last season but won’t be here long this time around – but only because his 22nd birthday is later this month. Before he ages out of contention, he gets back into the rankings courtesy of a battling performance at St. James’ Park in which he won virtually every duel, made every tackle he could and passed the ball very nicely indeed with a 91% completion rate. We’ll even forgive him for a couple of highly speculative long-range efforts which gave Nick Pope a bit of practice but little more.

8. Tino Livramento – Newcastle United (re-entry)

Another youngster who came away from Newcastle’s 2-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur with considerable credit. The full-back dropped out of our listings last week after a pretty difficult day at Bournemouth, but he’s back in thanks to a combative and effective showing of attacking wing-back play combined with some excellent work sweeping up attacks down the Spurs left, resulting in eight clearances. He also put in a handy half-hour shift off the bench against Nottingham Forest in the League Cup second round win.

7. Yankuba Minteh – Brighton & Hove Albion (⬇️2)

After a hugely impressive first game of the season, some of the Gambian winger’s inexperience is starting to show and he struggled to get into the game against Arsenal before being hooked off. He only got 22 touches of the ball and ended up giving possession away nine times as well as missing an excellent chance bang in front of goal which was dealt with by David Raya. There will be better games ahead.

6. Abdul Fatawu – Leicester City (⬇️3)

Another winger who was absolutely superb on the opening weekend and even took top spot in our first Wonderkid Power Rankings of the season, but he’s been a little quieter since. In the 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa he was more battling than impactful and all his shots and final balls only amounted to 0.06 expected goal’s worth of chances – nor did he have any time to get involved in the League Cup win over Tranmere Rovers. The former Sporting forward still put plenty of hard yards in, at least.

5. Savinho – Manchester City (⬇️4)

Obviously, these rankings are always a little arbitrary at the best of times as there’s no nailed-on statistical way to compare a defender’s performances with a striker’s and so on, but when players miss a game through injury just three weeks into the season it’s hard to know how much of an impact on their ‘form’ that can be said to have.

Our general rule with the Power Rankings has been that players in the top five only get booted out of the rankings for missing a game if they’re out for the long term, so dropping Savinho down to the middle of the pack after he missed out against West Ham United feels about right.

4. Kobbie Mainoo – Manchester United (⬇️2)

Mainoo had a pretty rough ride against Liverpool, constantly doubled on by opposing midfielders and crowded out time and again, prevented from bringing his dribbling and passing game to bear. Not a player often swamped or outworked by his opposite numbers, Liverpool were a bit too much for him on this occasion.

That’s arguably something that should be blamed on the system rather than the individuals but there’s also no question that he should have done better when bullied off the ball by Alexis Mac Allister in the build up to Mohamed Salah’s goal. A booking compounded a bad day for a brilliant young player who may have dropped more places in a week when more young players were at their best.

3. Jhon Durán – Aston Villa (⬆️4)

The 20-year-old Colombian is rapidly ascending towards the superstar supersub status of players like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Kevin Gallagher, and now has two goals in barely a full match’s worth of football off the bench for Aston Villa – and both of them were effectively winners, too.

And his header to seal the deal against Leicester City was absolutely superb, a quick step to lose his marker, a leap that a salmon heading upstream towards its spawning grounds would be proud of and perfect placement over the goalkeeper and into the corner. It looked for a long time like he would be leaving this summer, and it looks like Unai Emery will be very happy that he stayed.

2. Facundo Buonanotte – Leicester City (⬆️4)

Another supersub performance from the tricksy Leicester loanee, who wasn’t in Steve Cooper’s starting eleven this time but probably won’t be left out very often based on the evidence of the opening weeks of the Premier League season – and while his goal didn’t swing the result as Durán’s did, it was still a fine finish.

It took a quick change of direction and good concentration to line up the deflected cross faster than any of Villa’s defenders could react to it and to fire it accurately through the crowd and in – and even outside of that, his use of the ball was genuinely impressive, with 17 completed passes out of 20 attempts even though he wasn’t on the field for any length of time.

1. Rico Lewis – Manchester City (⬆️3)

Lewis wasn’t the best player on the pitch during the eventual 3-1 at the London Stadium – that was repeat hat-trick hero Erling Haaland, of course – but he was pretty close, and a richly-deserved senior England call-up under Lee Carsley followed a dominant and deeply mature performance in the champions’ midfield. Rodri who?

His passing was superb throughout, his use of the ball and reading of the game impeccable and he came out on the right side of every fifty-fifty situation he was drawn into. There was an assist, too, although in fairness Haaland did most of the work with that goal. Blots on the copybook? Well, he did blaze a presentable chance over the bar for the second game in the row, but apart from that he’s been consistently superb for Pep Guardiola, and it’s not as if he’s in the line-up for his goalscoring prowess. Congratulations, Rico, you’re the new number one wonderkid in the Premier League.