The +10 Club #7

Written by Thommo on February 25 2019

His name has long been pseudonymous with inconsistency, but in 2019 this man will no longer be aptly named…

Welcome to The +10 Club:

I actually owned this yo-yo. God I’m old!

 Name: Elliot Yeo

Team: West Coast

Position: MID

Price: $585,500

Bye round: 13

2018 average: 107.9ppg

2018 games played: 22

Why will Yeo improve by 10 points?

The answer is quite simple: Because Yeo has finally become a full-time midfielder. With the retirement of Priddis and Mitchell, the Eagles were lacking in contested ball winners for 2018, so Adam Simpson was forced to finally throw Yeo into the guts early in the season where he attended the most centre bounces of any Eagle.

And that is clearly where Yeo belongs! He has long shown the ability to rack up big Supercoach scores as a midfielder as he has the ultimate Supercoach game: He wins contested possessions, he uses the ball well, he tackles well, he loves a contested (or pack) mark and he impacts the game when the result is tight. However, as with Bontempelli and Dustin Martin, his adaptability has worked against him meaning he has been forced to play multiple positions, sometimes in the same match. Show me a player who scores at their peak when forced into constant positional change! He’s a veritable Kama Sutra!

For those Supercoaches who started with Yeo in 2018, the season started on a high as he joined the midfield in Rounds 1 and 2. Unfortunately in Round 3 Simmo decided to make Yeo his “Mr Fix-It” again and threw him behind the ball against Geelong. In that match he barely touched the ball to three-quarter-time but he had an immediate impact on the game when he was finally moved into the midfield in the final quarter. He only scored 27 SC points for the match (mostly in the final quarter) which pained his owners, but obviously that match demonstrated to Simpson that Yeo truly belonged in the midfield as he remained there from that time on.

Which led to Yeo pumping out elite scores in the second half of the season. Post bye he averaged 115ppg compared with just 100.5ppg leading up to the bye. Even better, Elliott Yeo seemed to improve his form away from home. Like the Eagles, he has never scored consistently well away from WA but in 2018 he averaged 108.5ppg at home compared with 107.1ppg on the road.

He also minimized some of his game-to-game inconsistency with only 2 scores below 80 points for the season. True, one of those was a 27 and the other a 70 point effort when tagged by Hunter Clarke, but after the bye Yeo never dropped below 88 points.

Surprisingly in 2018 Yeo didn’t improve on his 2017 disposal average of 24 per match despite the midfield move. Rather his Supercoach improvement came from an increase in clearances to 4.3 per match, an increase in contested possession rate from 41% to 50% and an increase in tackling from 3.4 to 6.7 per game. Spending more time in packs meant his marking dropped from 7 to 5.2 per match but he kicked 5 more goals across the season.

In short, Yeo has plenty of growth possible in his disposal numbers in a full-time midfield role.

Why won’t he improve?

Despite his improvement in 2018, he still showed some tendency to yo-yo. I know I said he was more consistent in the latter half of 2018 but he still lacked the supreme consistency of the top-shelf midfielders.

His decent ceiling of 140-150 offsets the low scores somewhat, but he did throw in 4 sub-100 scores in the second half of 2018 and 7 across the entire season. And don’t forget he scored 27 points in Round 3.

27 points!

Name another premium midfielder who has pumped out a 27 in recent history!

That score came in a defensive, rather than midfield, role but it stank so badly I can still detect the odour.

With any premiership player you must also have some doubts about the obligatory premiership hangover or simply a delayed preseason. I don’t know about you, but I am starting to feel nervous about Yeo and he’s not even in my team!

Prediction

115-118ppg

To date, the only predictable thing about Yeo has been his unpredictability but I think he is ready to iron out that flaw in 2019. The only proviso to this prediction is that he must have a flawless JLT: If you see any signs of injury or a premiership hangover then run away as fast as you can.

Who trusts the Yeo-yo in 2019

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15 thoughts on “The +10 Club #7”

  1. Great stuff as always Thommo!
    Tough one for me … I don’t think he’ll improve by 10 … possibly stay around the same. … As you mention, may be used as Mr Fixit and be moved around a bit … after all, the Eagles also have Shuey coming back, Gaff after his suspension and an emerging Redden who is also offering a lot.
    May be hard to rack up an increase in points above 108ppg from 2018 ??

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    1. Even with Shuey he should be able to score but I struggle to trust him, especially with the recent injury news. He’s burnt too many coaches too many times!

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  2. “Name another premium midfielder who has pumped out a 27 in recent history!”

    Kara Donnellan scored 25 on the weekend 😛

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  3. Until a week ago he’d been up and down my premium midfield list like … well, a yo-yo. The toe worries me. IF he looks good in the JLT I may still consider starting him but it looks unlikely.
    After poring over stats I feel he and Cogs are the most likely to break into the Top6 midfielders this year, but the increasing light shed on his compromised pre-season makes him an upgrade target for me. In that respect, an early 27 pointer would be ideal!
    Thanks Thommo. Great stuff.

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    1. I wrote this a few weeks ago before the injury news. As I wrote, any mention of an injury or delayed preseason means run away! Too many teams have struggled to back up a premiership in recent years.

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  4. Would be a much easier choice to include in the team if he didn’t share the same bye as Neale and Oliver! Hard to have more than 2 Rd 13 mid premos on the pine with Sicily, Gawndy and an endless supply of forwards sharing that same bye round.

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    1. Sicily is 12 but I get your point … Lloyd!
      Currently have no Rd13 MIDs for that reason. Will definitely add one before the byes and maybe even Oliver before the season starts (just need him to show), but would like to leave room for Danger and/or Heeney to switch to MIDs that week.

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      1. Sorry did mean Lloyd! Anyway Rd 13 is shaping to be the toughest bye round this year. Although a lot of the rookies (at least in my initial team) are Rd 12 or Rd 14 which offsets this slightly

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  5. Elliot Yeo is one of those guys I can see being a top 8 mid, but I also just really don’t want to have him in my team… maybe I’ll wait till he pumps out another sub 50 score, pick him up cheap

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  6. Good stuff Thommo. Yeo is a gun and I have him in my mix. The injury is not a big deal, he’ll shake it off before the real stuff starts. Looking at the Mids with R13 bye, there are many uncertainties, Oliver is coming off a double surgery and Neale is going to be in a new team that doesnt win many games. West Coast will win games, specially at home. Simmo knows what changes made him win the premiership so If anything, he won’t change the winning formula (Well I hope so). I like a Yeo as Mid for a full year. If he pulls off ok post JLT, he is in my team. I will rather take the odd 27 than waste a trade because I know he wont miss many games.

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    1. Awesome Ratticus. Glad to hear you weren’t one of those fancy bastards with their coca cola yo-yos. I hated those kids!

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