The Wonderkid Power Rankings: Man City, Spurs & Ipswich stars in this week's top ten

Welcome back to the weekly Wonderkid Power Rankings – 3 Added Minutes’ vaguely scientific attempt to figure out who the best young players in the Premier League are based on their form at the very highest level of the game.

Last week, we found ourselves with a brand new number one as Newcastle United’s Lewis Hall took the crown for the very first time, not long before he was awarded his very first England call-up – which isn’t quite as big of a deal, of course, but was probably a nice cherry on top. But can he hang on for a second consecutive week at the top?

We lose one player from our top ten this week – Brighton & Hove Albion’s Yasin Ayari had scraped in last time around thanks to a few highly promising performances, but he looked rather overwhelmed in midfield against Manchester City (alongside fellow former Rankings member Jack Hinshelwood) and despite his side ending up with the three points, Ayari loses his spot. That does mean some room for a big-name re-entry, however…

10. Levi Colwill – Chelsea (⬇️2)

Having been a model of consistency for the first couple of months of the season, Colwill isn’t having his best time of late and can be grateful that plenty of other youngsters are going through a lean patch right now, else he’d be out of the top ten. He was culpable for Arsenal’s goal in the 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge, caught out positionally and spoiling an offside trap that otherwise would have worked, and seemed uncharacteristically flustered on several occasions. Having pulled out of England’s Nations League squad, Colwill will be out of the rankings next week by default (players outside of the top five who can’t play are dropped out) and he’ll have to pull himself together a bit to get back in.

9. Alejandro Garnacho - Manchester United (re-entry)

A frustrating run of form for the exciting but inconsistent Argentine saw him lose his regular place in our rankings more than a month ago, but he has finally strung together a couple of sufficiently impressive showings to earn his place back – and it certainly would have been unduly harsh to exclude him after his glorious 20-yard curler against Leicester City, the cherry on top of a much-improved Manchester United performance. Even aside from that, though, he looked steadier, more decisive, and protected the ball better than he had in recent matches.

8. Milos Kerkez – Bournemouth (⬇️2)

The Hungarian wing-back followed perhaps the best performance of his career up with a rather less impressive outing in the 3-2 defeat to Brentford. Not that Kerkez did a great deal wrong or made any serious mistakes, but he wasn’t able to get to grips with Bryan Mbeumo or to make a telling contribution going forward – he failed to complete any of the six long passes he attempted, and didn’t complete a single dribble. An off day, but after the way he played against Manchester City there was no chance that he’d lose his grip on the top ten entirely.

7. Destiny Udogie – Tottenham Hotspur (⬇️2)

The Italian left-back slips a couple of spots this week following an up-and-down display in the shock defeat to Ipswich Town. This was one of those weeks where he did some things very well – his passing, in particular, stood out – but was rather less impressive elsewhere, and in this case that meant losing out in a few one-on-ones and getting dribbled past a couple of times, although he wasn’t responsible for either of Ipswich’s goals.

6. Liam Delap – Ipswich Town (⬆️3)

The 21-year-old summer signing has been Ipswich’s only real glimmer of hope all season – and that glimmer got a little larger thanks to Delap’s goal and assist at Tottenham Hotspur. Sure, his assist was a flicked header which required Sammie Szmodics to perform some acrobatics to meet it, and granted that he couldn’t have missed his goal-line tap-in had he tried, but scoring and setting goals up for a relegation-threatened side, and doing it with increasing regularity, deserves a great deal of credit.

5. Savinho – Manchester City (⬆️2)

It’s been a pretty terrible couple of weeks for Manchester City, but not for Savinho, who continued to look lively and creative despite a pair of chastening defeats to Sporting and Brighton.

It must be admitted that while heavily involved against Sporting he was a little scattershot, taking six cracks at goal without success and not always making the right decision, but he was still playing with more verve that any other member of Erling Haaland’s supporting cast – and while he surely should have done better when one-on-one with Bart Verbruggen at the Amex Stadium, it was one of his many incisive and lightning-fast runs that created the chance in the first place. We’ve chosen to be generous and to highlight the positives while gently glossing over the lack of end product. For now.

4. Facundo Buonanotte – Leicester City (-)

The on-loan Argentina international was in a pretty similar boat to his fellow South American Savinho this week – lots of industry, energy and creativity, but without the end product. Buonanotte was the beating heart of Leicester’s ultimately ineffective attack at Old Trafford and created several presentable chances, but drew a blank along with his team-mates in the end.

As with Savinho, we’ve decided to err on the side of generosity and reward the upside he brings by keeping him just outside the top three, but unlike Savinho there is a clear weakness to worry about – Buonanotte is pretty flimsy in close-quarters situations and contrived to lose no fewer than 17 one-on-ones this weekend, whilst also giving possession away a massive 32 times. A thrilling player at his best, but with some elements of his game that need work.

3. Jhon Durán – Aston Villa (⬇️1)

The Colombian centre-forward has so much credit in the bank that we couldn’t drop him too many places after just one bad week (in which he drew an extremely rare blank) but there’s no debate that this was the weakest showing of the season from the supersub extraordinaire.

Between about an hour of football against Club Brugge and Liverpool he mustered the sum total of zero shots on goal and barely touched the ball. Time and again, Durán has come off the bench to score – this time, he was a non-factor. That’s the exception, however, to a very impressive rule.

2. Rico Lewis – Manchester City (⬆️1)

Last week, we said that we could pretty much copy and paste our summation of Lewis’ week every time we wrote about him, and this was absolutely no exception – get ball, pass ball, move into space, get ball, pass ball… Lewis is developing into the ultimate Pep Guardiola player, an efficient possession machine with few flaws save for his lack of meaningful contribution in the final third.

This week, however, there was – gasp! – a mistake, which led to one of Sporting’s shots in the 4-1 dismantling in Portugal, and he even dipped below 90% passing accuracy, frankly an aberration by Lewis’ standards. But while he was a fraction off his best in that game, he looked like his old self against Brighton despite the defeat, and did enough to move up a spot with Durán sliding.

1. Lewis Hall – Newcastle United (-)

All of which means that Hall remains on top of our Power Rankings for a second week despite some mistakes in the 3-1 win over Nottingham Forest – this was a game in which we saw some of Hall’s inexperience, but also saw plenty of reasons why he could well be the long-term left-back of the future for England.

He was beaten on the run a couple of times and gave the ball away in a dangerous area on one occasion, but also racked up six turnovers and a blocked shot for a mixed defensive bag – going forward, however, we saw plenty of his promise with some excellent passing and movement to help keep play flowing forward and some fine work out wide in support of a narrower Newcastle attack. His crossing was off on this occasion – he didn’t complete any of his six – so it wasn’t a perfect day in the Forest half, but there was plenty to smile about, and enough to justify another week as our vote for the best young player in the Premier League right now.