PLFantasy

Season of two Halves - Second Half Sleepers posted at Fantasy Football Scout (free content)

I've had a few questions of late about making transfers with the intention of making money, and the potential rewards this can have. Unfortunately I haven't uncovered any new secret so this post is going to be a bit unscientific, but it will hopefully give some general pointers (and warnings) about how to play the transfer game. Being first to market The easiest, and most effective, way to make money is to identify a player who isn't widely held, sign him, and then have him succeed, preferably in a very evident way via a double digit point game or two (consistent 6 point games aren't as effective). For example, after nine gameweeks Gareth Bale had largely been a fantasy disappointment. He had just 26 points (2.88 P90) with 10 of those points coming in one game against Wigan. At that point, if you bought into Bale (7.9m) you would have seen his price rise 0.5m in just four gameweeks and 1.0m after six. By GW21 his price had risen by a full 1.5m. That's great if y...

P90  Points per 90 minutes at home/away based on the player's fixture  QG  Number of quality games for the season (6 or more points)  BG  Number of bad games for the season (3 points or less)  %  Percentage of team goals scored or assisted  SD  Standard deviation of player scores (risk)  Rating  Percentage of team goals accounted for multiplied by expected team goals for the week. <a href="#"><img alt="Dashboard 1 " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/Ca/Captain_0...

With the new rankings tables doing a lot of the legwork, and with no games this weekend, I've got some extra time for a post, and with no ideas immediately springing to mind, I thought I should use the time to catch up on some reader questions. As it's wildcard season I am just looking at team reviews here (whether wildcard or not) which will hopefully allow me to cover off all the players I like/don't like for the remainder of the year. Wildcard Reader:  Ramzy Proposed team : Mignolet, Vorm : BAE, Richards, Simpson, Evans, Kelly : Silva, Valencia, Dempsey, Sessegnon, Bale : Aguero, RVP, Helguson I love the entire defence and I'm not sure I'd do anything different. If I did I'd say that I'm not crazy about the Newcastle defence for the short term, so I might look at Brown or N Taylor for the next few weeks. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it's important to consider what your next couple of transfers will be and given the rest of your team lo...

Don't forget that there are no games this weekend with the next deadline coming next Tuesday for a full midweek slate. That gives us a couple of days so hopefully I'll have a couple of extra pieces up this week. Weekly rankings are below. <a href="#"><img alt="Weekly Rankings " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/We/WeeklyRankings/WeeklyRankings/1_rss.png" style="border: none" /></a> Powered by Tableau CS Clean sheets kept at home/away based on this week's fixture Opp FTS Number of times this week's opponent has failed to score at home/away GPG Conceded Predicted goals conceded this week based on a team and their opponent's performa...

I played my wildcard this week and a few readers on Twitter asked where I finally landed. Here's the new team and the rough thought process behind each player. Goalkeepers Vorm kept his place and is almost undroppable at this point as (a) he's awesome and is one of the best value players in the game and (b) it'll cost me 0.6m to get him back if I sell him. Barring injury he's on board until at least GW36 (his last two game are tough so if I'm desperate for GK health I could ditch him). I almost went with Lindegaard, and may well land there long term but decided that at least in the short term, Mignolet was the better pick. Even after this week's clean sheet, Sunderland still get Nor (H), Sto (A) and WB(A) in the next four weeks so Mignolet should prove to be a nice mid-term option. Defence I stuck with Jose Enrique, Richards and Assou Ekotto  as I couldn't find too many premium options to warrant the loss of money I'd suffer ditching any of ...

Arsenal Szczesny, Djourou, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Rosicky, Song, Ramsey, Walcott, van Persie, Oxlade-Chamberlain Subs: Almunia, Park, Squillaci, Arshavin, Benayoun, Miquel, Yennaris. It was a pleasant surprise to see Oxlade-Chamberlain in their starting lineup given the recent struggles of Arshavin. He didn't disappoint either, impressing with his movement, composure and football IQ (sorry, Theo) which led to a good assist for Van Persie's goal. We're always looking for fantasy value in this Arsenal team and at 5.7m Ox has some makings of that very player. However, this was his first league start and only his third appearance so be careful not to get carried away here. Maybe Wenger decides to throw him out there for the rest of the season (he can't be much worse than Arshavin and Walcott have been at times this year) but it's too risky to make that leap right now. I want to say more, but there just isn't much else of interest in this lineup. A...

Something which has bothered me this year are the weekly captain rankings, as I find they generally descend into the standard conjecture you find on other fantasy sites. It's not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just it is freely available elsewhere and I don't think you get much out of reading it all again here. With that in mind, I'm moving to a more stats based approach, though with the intention of providing a pool of data, rather than specific rankings (which will depend on how risky you want to be, last minute injury news etc which I struggle to keep up with 100%). Update : There has been confusion as to what the original table was setting out. I do not really have 'rankings' as such, only a number of different metrics which I use to base my weekly captain decision on. I haven't found one to be the 'magic bullet' and thus I'm shying away from saying Player X is clearly the best pick of the week, unless of course he was the...

I've been looking for a better way to present the data on this site for sometime, and, finally, I think I've found the answer. The folks at Tableau have put together some great software, which (hopefully) will allow me to update the site quicker and present more analysis in numerical form. Below then are the weekly forecasts for GW22. The advantage of this is that it will allow me to get the rankings up sooner (and thus help with transfer decisions), while the captain rankings will follow later in the week (as that decision can be made at the last minute). Please let me know in the comments or @plfantasy if the below table isn't showing up, or looks wrong (doesn't fit on page etc). If you do have any issues, please advise on whether you're using a Mac or PC and what browser you are using. I'm still experimenting so please be patient with anything that looks a bit off in the next day or so. <a href="#"&...

Arsenal Szczesny, Djourou, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Miquel, Walcott, Ramsey, Song, Benayoun, Arshavin, van Persie Subs: Almunia, Rosicky, Park, Henry, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Squillaci, Yennaris. Arshavin and Walcott have to be two of the most frustrating, supposedly good players in the league, and yet they both line up in a significant amount of games for Wenger's side. Walcott at least gets into good positions but his final ball has regressed once again to simply hitting it hard into the box or taking an ill-advised shot (he did take his goal very nicely though, hence: frustrating). Arshavin, however, contributes essentially nothing and worse, gave away the ball for Swansea's second this week. Rosicky did okay off the bench without much end product but you'd expect that he or Oxalde-Chamberlain will get more minutes in the future. Henry came on to play alongside Van Persie suggesting that's an option too, but you'd be surprised if he is fit enough to immediately st...

Captain Picks Those top four teams look pretty appealing and when you throw the ever present Van Persie to the mix, you have good depth in captain options for this week. I've been working on some data for an upcoming post, looking at the percentage of goals each player accounts for (counting goals and assists). I hope this will make the above goalscoring forecasts more useful in that, if Arsenal are projected to score 2 goals and City are projected to score 2.3, you might still favour Van Persie as your captain over Aguero if you knew that he accounts for 64% of the Gunners goals (and is thus forecast to account for 1.28 goals) where as Aguero's percentage is just 38% and so he is forecast to account just 0.86 goals.A full post is to come on this, but I start to reference the stats below, as I try to make the captain more picks for quantitative, rather than just the standard, "Rooney is good, Bolton are crap' you get elsewhere. Wayne Rooney Rooney already ha...

In case anyone missed today's announcement, I've been lucky enough to be invited to write some guest posts over at Fantasy Football Scout . I'm sure everyone who reads this humble blog is well aware of the awesomeness of FFS, but if not then I whole heartedly recommend the site as a daily must read. Nothing will change here and I'll continue to post the weekly preview, lineup lessons and other ramblings you've grown accustomed too. My posts at FFS will be a mixture between free to all and members only, and I'll link to them from here (and note whether you need to be a member or not). I'll also continue to ramble on Twitter @plfantasy - something I recommend for all. It may not sound like everyone's thing but even if you never post, it's a great way to follow the news and keep up to date without trawling sites every day. Anyway, thanks for everyone's continued support and I look forward to the remainder of the season which is shaping up ni...

Any time one of the league's better players struggles for goalscoring form and then breaks his drought, you will inevitably hear the commentator point out that while his poor 'form' was temporary, his class is permanent. We aren't here to perform autopsies on former stars of previous decades to suggest their class was anything but permanent, but instead we will examine the very notion of 'form' and how this is reflected in a player's goalscoring record (and hence fantasy success). A player is described as being 'in form' under two distinct scenarios. The first is where a (rare) commentator has actually watched all of that players' games, assessed his overall performance and concluded that he is playing up to his full potential. The second, and much more common occurrence, is where an 'expert', or more pertinently here, a fantasy manager, will assess that a player is in form because he's scored a couple of goals in the last few week...

@McShambles Is Elliott Bennett worth a punt as my 5th midfielder now that Brunt is injured? Two assists in last two games for Norwich and 4.8 No one in that Norwich side has been able to lock into the first team and with just two starts since GW12 I don't think Bennett is the answer here. I still like B Johnson the most from the Canaries but would still rank him behind Moses and Faurlin who remain atop my budget mid list. Gower has fallen away having struggled to log consistent minutes over the Christmas period. @CSJDKK will u be making a list of prem players going to the African Cup? I will try and do a post on this, but in the mean time, Fantasy Football Scout has a nice summary here . nsj91 - Chris (or anyone else for that matter).. do you have any suggestions on the ideal week to play the january wildcard? It's going to be subjective based on your team's performance and injuries but given that we only have 3 gameweeks to use the extra wildcard, if you need to...