PLFantasy

As we all know, getting too bogged down in data analysis at this stage of this season can be dangerous, as the sample sizes on hand lead to one anomaly having a material impact on our conclusions (whether or not that changes after just 8-10 weeks is an argument for another day, but we can agree that three of four games isn't enough to make too many concrete claims). One factor, however, that is equally essentially to fantasy success that can be discussed now is playing time. Regular playing time at this stage of the season doesn't guarantee a future spot in the side, but it is indicative that a given player sits atop the depth chart at his position and is at least in a position of privilege for the coming weeks. One of the charts I included in the recently released e-book showed the defenders for every team for each week of the season, assigning them a status based on whether they were rotated by choice or unavailable for selection. The idea being, that we can deal with i...

I simultaneously love and hate writing posts at this time of year. On the plus side, there is so much happening with new transfer signings bedding into their respective teams, the promoted sides showing what they're made of and familiar faces emerging or fading as fantasy stars. With all that excitement though, comes the nagging issue of sample size, which needs to be trotted out with boring regularity during these early stages of the season. I don't think anyone reading these pages would be naive enough to assume that Liverpool have emerged as the best defensive unit of all time, yet to totally ignore their impressive start seems a bit too conservative in the other direction and might lead us to miss out on emerging trends. With this in mind, I'm going to have a very tentative peak at the shots created/conceded by each team compared with their 2012/13 totals and see if we can we start to spot any flags which need to be watched more closely in the coming weeks. Remember,...

I'm back on solid ground and back to reality so the blog will be getting back into full swing very soon. Over the last three weeks I haven't had much of an internet connection and didn't have a laptop, so it's going to take me a couple of days to get the data recorded and catch up with the latest news, but I hope to have a limited data set ready for GW4 and everything up and running by GW5. In reality, this is fine as two or three weeks of current year data isn't going to help us too much anyway, so the only real value I can offer in the early weeks is some rambling notes over who is starting and who isn't. The priority then is to get all the underlying data work done and then put together a bumper "lineup lessons" to discuss the new transfers and a couple of unexpected surprise names. Thanks for sticking with me through this quiet period and thanks again to everyone who bought the e-book.