Week 4 Wrapup

-

Ashley Young and Martin Laursen chipped in with some useful points last night though it was within 4 minutes of being an excellent night. Darren Bent's 86th minute goal took away a clean sheet for Laursen and Young and Young when on to get booked for time wasting, costing a total of 6 points. Young and Laursen received 3 and 2 bonus points respectively to lessen this blow.

Another decent week leaves me 803rd in the premierleague.com rankings which is by far my best ever position. The game also convinced me that I need to get rid of David Bentley this week. He had been unimpressive this season but I thought I'd weather the storm and stick with him. However, he started on the bench last night which is unacceptable for a 8m player. Thoughts now turn to who to replace him with (see next post).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Expected goals plus-minus

-
Image
As the season ticks on, we're starting to get a bit of data to work with, albeit sometimes in small samples. This season I am not working with a relatively complex player model but am really interested in trying to "play the fixtures" as much as I can. A couple of sources of frustration, therefore, have been as below: 1. Sites which provide the difficulty of fixtures often seem a bit simplistic. For example, the Premier League site shows Wolves as an average "3-rated" opponent, both at home and away yet the reality is more complicated. While at home they have been very solid defensively, with an Expected Goals Conceded (xGC) of just 4.71 in five games, which ranks third best, yet on their travels they have surrendered 7.94 xGC, which is the third worst . Even more confusing is that most sites ( though not all ) don't distinguish between attacking and defensive fixtures, so facing Leeds at home is presented as an easy "2-rated" fixture when in reali
Read more

Selecting defenders within the same team

-
We talked about this earlier in the season, but with a couple more games in the bag, I've updated the viz which attempts to help you choose your defenders. The "All Players" tab should in theory help you do this coming with a blank slate, but the r aison d'etre for the viz is to help you choose between players in the same side, once you've decided that, for example, you want a City defender. The viz can be found linked from the main menu , and here and should be opened separately to best read this piece. A few notes as of GW5 below. Arsenal I'm not sure how much value there is with this defense right now, but if you are planning to play the fixtures and take a chance with one of Emery's men, this would suggest it should be Mustafi rather than the 10% owner Bellerin who you should target. Bournemouth Cook is the man here for now, though if a clear winner emerges from the developing Daniels vs Rico battle then one of those players could topple him b
Read more

A brief update

-
Happy holidays everyone; it's been a while. For those not on Twitter, I was away in Costa Rica over the break without much - if any - internet access hence the lack of posts around these electronic pages. Well, actually, that's only the main reason, not the only one. In truth I've become a bit disillusioned with the fantasy game the past couple of months, partly due to my other commitments which make copying data at 2am somewhat less appealing, partly due to a lack of excitement in this year's game and finally due to the constant frustration I have with today's internet culture. This blog is a labour of love and aside from the small amount of money I made from the pre-season guide many of you graciously purchased, I don't get much out of this beyond the enjoyment of interacting with readers and hopefully helping a few of you to gain a couple of extra fantasy points every now and then. While some of that enjoyment remains, I feel it has waned over time and th
Read more