PLFantasy

Learn About Tableau

Learn About Tableau

Striking the balance between risk and reward is a difficult task in fantasy sports and getting the wrong mix can result in wasted points and eventual failure. Perhaps this is me projecting my own views onto the analysis, but I feel that sometimes those of us who are more inclined to make decisions based on data are generally more concerned with the risk of too much action: such as paying ill-advised four-point transfers on a weekly basis or captaining players based on nothing more than a hunch. I often speak - as do those more learned than I - about the risk of relying on small samples and the need to regress anomalous results back to some form of mean to avoid overreacting to chance events, and these are indeed good virtues which will generally lead to fantasy success. What I want to talk about here though is another type of risk: the risk of in action, specifically as it pertains to making transfers. I noted last week that my team is valued at a measly 103m while the league'...

Learn About Tableau

I've noted a couple of times this week that I'm personally looking to make changes to my side given budgetary constraints and I assume at least some of you are in the same (or similar) position. I'd suggest the most common solution is to go with a "stars and scrubs" strategy, holding the star players like Suarez and Aguero (when healthy) while trying to fill your squad with a smattering of low priced picks who you believe you can squeeze enough value from to give you the edge. Generally, this strategy can work quite well as (a) you're better off with two players who score 8 points and 4 points than two who score 6 due to the ability to captain the star player, and (b) the game tends to leave a number of players undervalued due to a sudden increase in playing time or player improvement. However, at this stage in the season, I am concerned about the lack of budget options. The best budget options have been bid up to mid level prices and thus if you want to ho...

Learn About Tableau

I didn't plan to write a full post on the transfer window dealings as, well, they tend to be pretty boring. Aside from a few select writers, most of them simply cut and past snippets from Wikipedia and combine them with some vague knowledge of players from Football Manager before declaring the player a "hit" or "miss" or some other awful measure of success failure (Ferguson/Moyes, Anyone/Heskey etc). As you can sense though, there's a however coming. My own team's value is so low that I'm seriously hamstrung compared to many other managers and thus the onus is on me to find new value. If you're swimming in cash and/or sat pretty in your mini league I probably wouldn't get too involved in the new arrivals, at least until we've seen them in action for a month or so. But, if you're desperate like your humble blogger, cast your miserable gaze over this somewhat sorry list of alternatives (apologies for the random order, the below list ...

Each stage of the season throws up different challenges, and while I'm very conscious of not overreacting to small samples at the start of the year. sometimes I think my model and associated analysis can be too slow to react to emerging trends by putting too much weight on events from last August. For example, should we totally discount those opening weeks of the season when Liverpool were Suarez-less? Or, should we press the reset button on Fulham's woeful data after Meulensteen took over? With that in mind, the below graph shows the average attacking SiB +/- score for the season, the 8 week moving average and the 4 week moving average, with the weekly score in the bar chart below. A couple of teams stand out for further comment below: Learn About Tableau Arsenal It isn't immediately obvious what the problem is here, though mounting injuries putting a strain on Arsenal's solid (but not City-like) depth is likely a factor. Many have commented that Ozil has ...