PLFantasy

Clean Sheet Rankings  I am hesitant to try and over-engineer these rankings but it has always been my view when I read other fantasy sites that I'd prefer to have as much info as possible and then use my own judgement to decide what is best to rely on. Therefore, given that we are now 6 weeks in, I am going to include the rankings to reflect both the hybrid stats (based on last year's results and this years) as well as the rankings if you purely use this season's data. I have also included below some trends that need factoring into your decisions this week. Hybrid rankings (based on 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons) Birmingham (0.51) + Tottenham (0.53) Liverpool (0.56) - Stoke (0.62) Man City (0.66) + West Ham (0.76) West Brom (0.78) Chelsea (0.79) Everton (0.91) + Wolves (1.11) Wigan (1.13) Man United (1.20) + Sunderland (1.31) Fulham (1.63) + Blackburn (1.67) + Aston Villa (2.00) Newcastle (2.13) Bolton (2.16) Arsenal (3.17) Blackpool (3.68) 2010/11 ran...

A long distance flight with no TV screens and only a laptop and Excel sounds pretty boring, but for fantasy nerds like me, it provided some time to have a think about better ways to process data to create meaningful statistics (like I said: nerd). The product of the flight - aside from the consumption of a pile of junk food - is a new statistic I plan to refer to over the coming weeks and months: Schedule Adjusted Points per Millions Spent (aPPMS). Previous readers, or those with some common sense, will no doubt be able to see that Points per Million Spent (PPMS) is simply Points per Game (PPG), divided by the cost of that player. The idea is to try and assess 'value' rather than just points to avoid suggesting that an 9m player who scores 4.5 PPG (0.500 PPMS) is better than a 5.0m player who scores 4 PPG (0.800 PPMS). For reference, and as a benchmark, assuming most people have budget players on their bench (say, 20m worth) you would need to generate a PPMS o...

It's that time again to take a ramble around the league and pick out the key fantasy news, trends and stats from the weekend's action. It was an unpredictable week from both a fantasy and real world perspective and my - along with many others' - teams suffered accordingly. Six teams managed clean sheets (ranked 2nd, 7th, 11th, 12th, 14th, and 15th) though few (sane) managers will have started City players against the mighty Chelsea or indeed West Ham defenders for, well, any reason. That made defensive points aside from Birmingham somewhat sporadic as seen by Pure Juice's poor showing this week. My prediction spreadsheet also whiffed on several games only getting 9 teams' score correct within 1 goals and two teams being more than 2 goals wrong, though to be fair these were both in the wacky game at the Emirates (West Brom predicted to score 0, Arsenal predicted to score 4). Let's run round the key news for the weekend and assess the fantasy impact: Arsenal...

Clean Sheet Rankings I'm changing things a little but this week as along with the standard statistical predictions for goals conceded, I have also worked in some of the goal trends that I noted earlier in the week in order to generate my weekly rankings. I have looked for concrete trends based on statistical fact so these are not 'hunches' but more tweaked facts to incorporate the wider trends. Newcastle v Sto 0.34 Birmingham v Wig 0.44 Liverpool v Sun 0.43* Arsenal v WBA 0.50 Aston Villa @Wol 0.79* Man Utd @Bol 0.93* Fulham v Eve 0.71 Blackpool v Bla 0.77 Wolves v Ast 0.91 Chelsea @MnC 1.36 Man City v Che 1.47 Everton @Ful 1.48 Tottenham @WH 1.57 Wigan @Bir 1.93* West Ham v Tot 1.67 Stoke @New 1.81 Blackburn @Bll 1.82 Bolton v MnU 2.04 Sunderland @Liv 2.79 West Brom @Ars 4.17 *denotes a team whose ranking has been altered based on specific trend analysis noted below. I have capped these movements to 3 positions to avoid basing the rankings on ‘gut’ r...

We’re now 5 weeks into the new season and while it’s perhaps a touch hasty to reshape our team based on the early trends, it is never too early to look for indicators that might show where future value may lie. I have been tracking the way goals have been scored and who has scored them and some interesting trends have emerged that might be worth considering when deciding who to captain and which defenders to play each week. The data will be less useful for transfer decisions, but even then it can’t hurt to know a bit more about the player you are getting’s prospects over the coming weeks. Scoring/conceding analysis by position I have highlighted some of the strongest trends seen for certain positions scoring goals and for positions that tend to score against certain defences. For example, if Everton scored 5 goals and midfielders scored 4 of them, they would show up as Midfield 80% below. Equally, if Arsenal conceded 10 goals and forwards scored 5 of them, they would show up as Fo...

Apologies but I am in my final week of traveling and so this week's preview is going to be a condensed version. I will however respond to all comments in the previous post to answer your questions and will try and get to anything posted below before Saturday. Injuries seem to be dominating the fantasy landscape at the moment with Valencia and Zamora the latest long term injuries. Modric will be back quicker than expected though this could be a double edged sword as the Spurs midfield remains a crowded place. As this is the time of year when we all need to start making changes I have included the mid-long term ranks of all players I discuss below to indicate if they are one week options or should be transfer targets. Clean Sheet Rankings Chelsea Man Utd Tottenham Blackburn Aston Villa Stoke Man City Everton WBA Sunderland Arsenal Fulham Wigan West Ham Birmingham Newcastle Liverpool Bolton Wolves Blackpool  Captain Rankings Didier Drogba Florent Malouda ...

Not a great week for my predictions and my early season success is slipping away quicker than Rooney's shot at the United captaincy or husband of the year. The consolation on the defensive front is that only one team on Saturday managed to keep a clean sheet so the fact that teams like City (ranked 3rd) and Arsenal (4th) conceded to weaker opposition isn't too big a deal. It was however somewhat of a slap in the face that the best side of the day was Blackpool, who I had ranked 19th. Ouch. Sunday gave me much more joy with Birmingham-Liverpool drawing 0-0 giving my 2nd and 7th ranked teams their clean sheets. Of particular joy was Konchesky's clean sheet and 2 bonus points, having hyped him up and reccommended him a number of times over the past couple of weeks. The captain rankings were ruined almost single-handedly by Carlo Ancelotti, who: decided to bench Lampard despite quotes all week that he would play; started Malouda on the bench, and worse, brought...

Clean Sheet Rankings (expected goals conceded in brackets) As we start to see trends emerge for the new season, we are able to rely more and more on the season’s data, and discard that from last season. However, given that we are only 3 weeks in, I think it is too early to suggest that St James’ Park will yield 6 goals for every visitor and City will always fail to score an away goal. I have therefore maintained my reliance on my hybrid 2009/11 league table using both this year’s and last year’s data and I will incorporate 10/11-only data when it is more reliable (right now Blackpool are expected to concede 12.56 goals this week given their opponent (Newcastle) average 6 goals at home and their average goals conceded per game on the road (3.00) is over twice the league average). Aston Villa (0.28) Birmingham (0.44) Man City (0.49) Arsenal (0.50) Newcastle (0.58) Fulham (0.60) Liverpool (0.85) Wigan (0.91) Stoke (0.93) Chelsea (0.98) Man Utd (1.13) West Brom (1.20) Sund...

There was a flurry of activity towards the end of the transfer window which should have some fantasy impact, even if we didn't see any real big names arriving from overseas or switching EPL allegiances. In some ways this is no bad thing as top rated prospects will be valued as such (see David Silva) and you cannot afford to take a punt with 9m. For a lesser known player though, that 5.0m or 6.0m investment might prove to be fruitful down the road. A note of caution though: I would rarely, if ever, pick up a player for a new club before he has at least played two or three games. Their fitness, communication skills, adaptability and role at their new club are all uncertain at this point and it is needlessly risky to waste a transfer and money on a player that might not even feature for a month. Alexander Hleb - Birmingham Probably the most widely known in EPL circles of the players arriving late in the window, I think Hleb is a giant coup for Birmingham and might de...