PLFantasy

Clean Sheet Rankings Chelsea Tottenham Liverpool Man City Sunderland West Ham Arsenal Everton Stoke Birmingham Fulham Wigan Man Utd Newcastle Blackpool West Brom Wolves Bolton Blackburn Aston Villa Attacking Rankings Man City Chelsea Man Utd Sunderland West Brom Newcastle West Ham Wigan Tottenham Blackburn Arsenal Everton Stoke Wolves Liverpool Birmingham Bolton Blackpool Fulham Aston Villa Captain Stats Van der Vaart is playing equally well at home and away though he is crushing mid level team for 10.8 PPG. As Spurs welcome Fulham this week he is a very good option and projects to score more points than anyone this week. On the flip side his last two home games have yielded just 4 points so his owners must decide whether he is a funk or just a dip in form. Tevez isn't necessarily better at home than away but he is crushing weak sides at over 7 PPG and welcomes a Blackpool side who are giving up over 1.6 GPG. As with Van der Vaart his...

The games are coming thick and fast during the Christmas period so there's no time to dwell on GW19 (which was again frustrating for anyone who didn't have Tevez/Berbatov/Van der Vaart). Without further delay then, here are the GW20 rankings: Clean Sheet Rankings Liverpool Man City Chelsea Sunderland Stoke Arsenal Tottenham Birmingham Everton Man Utd Fulham West Brom West Ham Blackpool West Ham Newcastle Wigan Blackburn Bolton Wolves Attacking Rankings Man City West Brom Arsenal Tottenham Man Utd Everton Sunderland Chelsea Blackburn Liverpool Stoke West Ham Newcastle Birmingham Wigan Bolton Fulham Blackpool Aston Villa Wolves Captain Stats Van der Vaart has been in sensational form at home (8.0 PPG) and has 49 points over his past 5 games in total, including 3 double digit games. In 6 home games he has just one bad game (GW15 against Liverpool) with his next worse being points. He therefore makes an excellent captain option, parti...

The Chatter Diouf has launched a surprising - and frankly quite amusing - attack on Jamie Carragher to setup a tasty encouter at Ewood on 5 Jan.  Roy Hodgson has given a fairly brutal assessment of the Joe Cole signing adding: " He's not so much a player I can really take responsibility for. I'd have to share the responsibility for Joe, less so than for people like [Christian] Poulsen, [Raul] Meireles and [Paul] Konchesky, who are players I was quite happy to bring to the club ." Paul Doyle at The Guardian will not miss Birmingham if they fail to escape relegation this season stating "[t]hey have little creativity and no cutting edge. They have no pace. They do not even have the power of Blackburn and Stoke, nor the dynamism of Wolves". He does a nice job backing up some his claims with high level statistics and from the few times I've seen Birmingham this year (0-0 with City, 0-0 with Villa and 1-0 over Chelsea) they have been the definit...

I am always on the look out for new ways to predict fantasy results, especially those which take a quantitative look at evaluating data rather than just the usual 'hunches'. One such site I stumbled across recently was Fantasy Football Advice . They use predictive data to predict a player's score for the week and then if you log in using your pl.com team, the site can suggest potential transfers to maximise returns for the week. While you won't always agree with the suggestions (this week the site recommends selling Van der Vaart, someone I am very high on) it gives a useful second opinion and is a great confidence boost if it suggests the same transfer you already had in mind. This is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago when I started to get cold feet about dumping Hutton for Coleman. Fantasy Advice recommended the same course of action, I made the transfer and Coleman has gone on to score 12 points over the past two weeks. My philosophy for fantasy sports ...

At time of posting I am working on the basis that all games will go ahead as planned this week, though at least the Blackpool-Liverpool game is already looking doubtful. More updates on this will of course come later in the week but I would recommend holding off on your transfers for now and definitely not paying 4 points for any moves until we are more certain who will actually play. Clean Sheet Rankings Fulham Man Utd Blackburn Wolves Blackpool Everton Aston Villa Birmingham Arsenal Man City Bolton West Ham  Wigan Stoke Chelsea Newcastle Tottenham Liverpool Sunderland West Brom Team Goals Bolton Man Utd Blackpool Aston Villa Man City Arsenal Blackburn Wolves Fulham West Brom Newcastle Chelsea Everton Tottenham Birmingham Liverpool Wigan Stoke Sunderland West Ham Team Goals (form adjusted) Bolton Man Utd Man City Blackpool West Brom Blackburn Everton Arsenal Tottenham Chelsea Liverpool Fulham Birmingham Newcastle Stoke A...

I'm sure many readers play other fantasy sports such as NFL, baseball or basketball and are therefore more accustomed to the draft or even auction method of selecting a team rather than the premierleague.com format of picking a team based on price. I have been wanting to try a draft/auction for the EPL, as while I like the pl.com game, I generally prefer to build a squad for the season and tweak it with trades as we go. My main issue is the fact that in normal seasons we all end up with 5 or 6 of the same players so your league is won or lost depending on whether your Sunderland defender nicked an assist or not, rather than the fact you knew Andy Caroll would score 20 this season. I am therefore looking for a solution to create a draft/auction game. Does anyone know how this could be achieved without all being in the same room? I like auctions given that it gives everyone a chance to get anyone they want but I think this would be impossible without working out a time to all be on...

I am honored to have a guest piece posted over at the brilliant Equaliser Blog on my favorite player - Jay Jay Okocha. I urge you to check out the article and their excellent site in general.

It's been a long weekend thanks to the lack of EPL action, only tempered by a great weekend of NFL action and some decent Italian games. With just three games on the slate - one featuring two teams (Blackburn and West Ham) who basically have zero fantasy options - there isn't too much analysis for the week, but that hasn't stopped the news stories rolling in, particularly with regards to potential transfers in the new year. The Chatter Steve Kean is the bookies favorite to get the Blackburn job with some other suspect names like Dave Jones and Stuart Pearce also in the mix. Some higher profile names are also in the mix (Martin Jol, Martin O'Neill) but this chatter seems to have cooled after the early news stories . Without reading too much into one game, Blackburn had much more possession this week than in the previous home game and there was a clear concerted effort to play the ball wide with Gamst Pedersen being particularly involved. Pedersen is already havin...

I'm sure many readers will be aware of Pick Live if you follow the awesome Football Ramble , but for those who aren't, the game plays out like this. To Play the Big Game you simply: Pick any 5 players from the available squads to make your team We'll email you when the starting 11 for each time is confirmed Your team will play along to the entire selected match Your players score points if they start the match or get subbed on The top 3 entrants at the end of the match will share the prize pot The scoring is as below: Goal 20 points Assist10 points Completed pass 1 point  Shot on target 5 points Shot off target 2 points Interception 1 point Tackle 3 points Completed cross 1 point Save 5 points Goalkeeper action 1 point Red card -20 points Yellow card -10 points Failed pass -1 points Foul -3 points Own goal -20 points Offside -3 points Penalty miss -20 points You place your stake (for example 2 GBP) and then take a share of the jackpot if you'r...

One of my favorite daily columns to read is Buster Olney's daily baseball blog post which gives links from around the league, serving as a one stop shop for anyone wanting to keep up to date. I am therefore going to try and humbly replicate a similar post here either every day or every other day depending on how much good stuff I can find. Any recommended links (great stories, videos, breaking news etc) would be welcomed either by posting below or sending the link to @plfantasy . Also any feedback on whether people like the post and/or find it useful would be welcomed. As always thanks for reading and enjoy the below feast of footballing goodness: The Chatter One of my former favorite players, Frank Leboeuf, thinks Chelsea are too old and must beat Man Utd this week. Ferguson however suggests that Chelsea's problem is their lack of depth compared to prior years. Another former legend, Marcel Desailly, feels that the criticism of Ancelotti is laughable and is confident go...

Clean Sheet Rankings Blackburn Liverpool Man City Birmingham West Brom Chelsea Sunderland Everton Wigan Arsenal Bolton Newcastle Aston Villa Fulham Blackpool West Ham Wolves Tottenham Man Utd Stoke  Team Goal Rankings Arsenal Chelsea Blackpool West Brom Blackburn Tottenham Liverpool Wigan Birmingham Sunderland Stoke Aston Villa Man City Bolton Man Utd Wolves Newcastle Everton Fulham West Ham Team Goals (form adjusted*) West Brom Tottenham Arsenal Blackburn Man City Blackpool Sunderland Chelsea Stoke Birmingham Bolton Man Utd Wigan Aston Villa Liverpool Wolves Newcastle Everton Fulham West Ham *This formula simply adds extra weight (33%) to the last 5 games rather than the whole season. I haven't tested whether this has proven to be more effective but it's at least worth a glance. Captain Stats The captain picks this week are pretty tough with Chelsea and Man Utd squaring off on Sunday. The pick of the stats are b...

I have missed my ramblings of late (perhaps due to work commitments or perhaps because of my team/predictions being throughout depressing) but I am back this week to ramble around the league. What we know so far is that none of us know anything. That said, I can throw out some interesting facts which might give us at least a chance of picking some useful players: Clean Sheets Sunderland are now tied for the most clean sheets in the league with 8 to date (tied with high priced alternatives Chelsea and Man City). They have notched 7 in the past 11 weeks which equals Chelsea's phenomenal start to the season. Over the past five weeks Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Aston Villa and Bolton have combined for 0 clean sheets. In that same period, only Sunderland have managed to notch 3 clean sheets, though 9 other sides have managed 2. Despite the apparent lack of clean sheets, we have actually had 7 more than at the same point last season.  During the second half of last season we saw 12...

We all know the impact the African Nations can have on fantasy teams with the likes of Drogba, Adebayor and Kalou disappearing to warmer climates every two years. We are probably less aware of the Asian Cup given the relative lack of top Premier League prospects who represent these nations. The impact this year is minimal though a couple of key players will be leaving the EPL and this needs to be considered while setting your transfer strategy. The impacted players are: Tim Cahill Mark Schwarzer Lee Chung-Yong Brett Emerton Park Ji Sung Nothing to get too excited about, though Cahill is a big blow and Schwarzer and Lee each have holdings of over 3% right now. The biggest impact might be the players staying home who stand to benefit from their teammates departure. With a player from a winning team set to miss at least GW 22, 23, 24 and probably 25, players filling in might have some limited value. Two players who might enjoy some improved value are David Stockdale and Jermaine B...

In a post to start the season I looked at the correlation between points and a player's cost for the 2009/10 season . The correlation noted between points and cost for the season was as below: Goalkeepers 62% Defenders 56% Midfielders 70% Forwards 73% These numbers were fantastic but they did suggest that it was probably worth paying for a couple of premium midfielders and forwards as they were much more likely to deliver on their high price tag. With almost half a season gone I thought it might be useful to perform a similar exercise and see where the trends are going (I have used points per 90 minutes to eliminate the high level of injuries for the premium players): Conclusion: there is basically no correlation for any position! Midfield (59%) and defense (53%) are showing small signs of correlation while forwards (35%) are the worst by far. At the forward position we are not too far from saying a 6m forward has the same chance of a big season that a 12m forward. S...

Despite some customer dissatisfaction along with own disappointing form, I am sticking with the same prediction tools for now until I come up with something better. Here are rankings for this week: Clean Sheet Rankings Newcastle Everton Man City Man Utd Chelsea Tottenham Stoke Aston Villa Bolton Fulham Wolves Wigan Sunderland Birmingham West Ham Arsenal Blackpool West Brom Liverpool Blackburn Attacking Team Rankings Bolton Newcastle Aston Villa Man Utd Stoke Man City Wolves Fulham Everton Birmingham Blackburn Sunderland West Brom Chelsea Blackpool Tottenham Arsenal West Ham Wigan Liverpool Captain Stats The captain options are very limited this week with injuries (Fabregas, Van der Vaart) and tough fixtures (Che @ Tot, Ars @ MNU) taking their tole. The best options to be found are:   Berbatov is averaging 10.83 PPG at home and has only failed to top 6 points once in all his home games this season. United project to score a couple of ...

This isn't funny, I'm not laughing about anything. I'm not laughing about it, I take this sh*t seriously; real serious. I put my heart and sole into this sh*t every single week. I study my ass off. I don't just go out there and laugh. It's not funny. Nothing's funny to me. I don't want to go out there and get embarrassed: recommend selling Samir Nasri while buying Torres who didn't even play. I'm done, I'm sorry. Alright I'm not done, and for anyone who doesn't follow the NFL the above is a much quoted blow-up by failed quarterback Derek Anderson whose season is going about as well mine. For those keeping track at home I have now: Held Berbatov for 9 scoreless weeks then sold him the week he scores 5 goals. After weeks of pumping up Van der Vaart but not taking the leap myself, I finally made the move for him, gave him the armband and 11 minutes later he's limping off the field. Wrote an article explaining that Nasri is not goo...

A few readers, along with 23% of all fantasy players have been speculating of late over the virtues of Samir Nasri and while he is indeed having a fine season (67 points, 0.714 aPPMS, 86 aPoints) I am not totally convinced that his fantasy future is as bright. The closest Arsenal have come this year to a full strength side was probably GW5 against Sunderland. That day, Wenger lined up with Song and Wilshere as the holding pair, Arshavin and Nari as the wider forwards, Fabregas in an advanced role and Chamakh up front. Sounds okay so far, however, now bring in Van Persie, one of Arsenal's best players and an every week starter and I have an issue: " We can play Chamakh and Van Persie together. We can play Chamakh up front and van Persie behind . . . What is interesting is we can play all kinds of formations with the two. " (Wenger) So if Van Persie will play; who won't? Let's start with the central pairing. This season Wenger has gone with following pairs: W...

Sorry for the delay again this week, some joker at my job has got it in his head that any of those pesky clients are worth more than fantasy football rankings. Has he seen my team? I haven't topped 50 points for five weeks. Five weeks! Hopefully the below will help: Clean Sheet Rankings Sunderland Chelsea Liverpool Blackburn Arsenal Birmingham Stoke Man City West Brom Bolton Tottenham Wigan Newcastle Wolves Everton Fulham West Ham Aston Villa Attacking rankings (team goals) Liverpool (2.67) Sunderland (1.87) Arsenal (1.76) Chelsea (1.76) Blackburn (1.66) West Brom (1.42) Stoke (1.36) Birmingham (1.25) Man City (1.14) Newcastle (0.93) Bolton (0.82) Wigan (0.78) Tottenham (0.74) Fulham (0.67) Aston Villa (0.44) Wolves (0.44) Everton (0.31) West Ham (0.30) Captain Stats Tevez - Tevez has strangely been a lot better away from Eastlands (7.43 PPG) than at home (4.86 PPG) but has been very useful against sides conceding more than 1.5 GPG (7.25...