PLFantasy

I don't recall there ever being a side in the Premier League with so many viable fantasy options. The 2009-10 Chelsea side that scored 102 goals had Drogba, Lampard, Anelka and Malouda all with double digit goals but there's a non-zero chance that this City side could have four players approaching those totals by the holidays plus  two of the best two creative players in the league in Silva and De Bruyne. This week they have the top five xP players - which is simply absurd - and even Sane could be argued to be higher as he's currently still being penalised for his early season sub appearances (though with Aguero back I'd personally argue they remain a risk). The real heartbreaker is that this game against Burnley looks delicious and someone is going to be benched and disappoint a lot of managers. Everyone except Aguero played midweek against Napoli so there are no clues there, but this is in theory the third game in which Aguero was fit enough play after his bro...

Given the short gameweek, I only have one main topic this week: Man City (and then a couple of words on Harry Kane). Whether you just saw the goals, highlights or whole game, there was no denying how impressive City's demolishing of Stoke was this week. All six of their starting midfielders and forwards amassed at least 31 points under the official BPS system, compared to just two players total from United, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsneal (Bakayoko and Eriksen). Jesus was given the most points under that system (which overvalues goals in my opinion), De Bruyne was awarded Man of the Match at the stadium while Sterling earned the most fantasy points thanks to his goal, two assists and bonus points. In short, there's a lot of talent to go around here. Two things jumped out this week about this City side that need a bit of exploring: 1. It's increasingly difficult to select just three City players given the talent on offer. Silva, Sterling and Mane are all perf...

Captain Notes Despite not boasting an overly impressive set of results to date, the model rates Liverpool's defense quite highly and thus perennial captain option Lukaku is well down this week's rankings. Morata  is a injury risk which is unfortunate given Chelsea's visit to lowly Palace, although even if fully fit the model is not enamored with the Spaniard thanks to so-so shot data for Chelsea on their travels. While they've racked up a very impressive 8 goals in 3 games, they've done so on just 21 SiB and 12 SoT, which makes the model cautious of future regression. For context, Arsenal have 20 SiB and 8 SoT in their three away trips and have yet to score. With Aguero out and City at home, Jesus is a very real option and I might have him second on my own adjusted list. He gets a good share of City's chances when on the pitch (24%) and while his SiB numbers cannot match the likes of Kane or Lukaku, his Big Chances per 90 minutes are right up there and...

With 8 clean sheets and big performances from the likes of Spurs, United and to a degree Arsenal, there were points a plenty this week, though as we can see above, not all those performances were necessarily backed up by the underlying stats. A couple of names to focus on here: Alexis Sanchez The model liked the Arsenal man as the best performer of the week with 10 expected points on 8 shots (4 SiB) and 6 CC. The "three elite forward" strategy which was en vogue for all of 2 weeks has been devastated by injuries to Aguero, Morata and Lukaku and so managers are now looking back to elite midfielders to lead their team and Sanchez is well placed to potentially fill that role. His incredibly low ownership number of just 3%, plus his earlier price fall make him an incredible opportunity to turn a profit if (or should we say when) his actual points haul starts matching his xP. Arsenal's fixtures are good but not spectacular as they face City and Spurs in GW10 an...

As we sit in the middle of another dull international week, many managers will be tempted to play (or have already played) that wildcard chip. With that in mind, I wanted to link to a few resources that I have posted over the past few weeks that might be useful Overall player projection  - projected points for the next 12 gameweeks Player share of key stats - the percentage of their team's SiB and CC that each player has accounted for Points vs Expected Points - a quick way to highlight players who have underperformed their underlying stats to date and could see increased fortunes in the future with improved conversion rates. Performance vs prior season - see how players have performed in this season's fixtures compared to the same fixture last season Team snapshot and projection - which teams are performing best and who do you need to secure coverage for? Defender selector - which defender gives the best combination of value and attacking threat within each ...

One of the downsides of the premierleague.com fantasy game is the fact that every manager has the same access to every player, which can cause teams to converge as the season goes on. This can lead to the conclusion that we need ways to differentiate our teams to try and gain some advantage over the pack. I would suggest there is some danger in chasing this idea too much as ultimately you need to be chasing points, not just unique points but there is of course some value to having players who offer something a bit different. The below visualization shows the standard points vs expected points chart but with the marks colour coded based on ownership. The bluer marks are the players everyone seems to own (Lukaku, Kane, Salah etc) while the orange marks show the players flying below the radar. The first observation is that the vast majority of players are in very few teams so your search for differentiators doesn't need to go too deep. You don't need to be looking at the...

Readers of this blog will likely be comfortable with the idea that one way in which we tend to mis-evaluate a player's performance to date is to focus too much on outcomes and not enough on process i.e. on goals and not shots. This problem, of course, is what stats like expected goals (xG) try to combat, as does simply looking at underlying stats rather than focusing on goals or assists. Another area for caution is to adjust for the opponents an individual player has faced. A player may well be good value for their 3 goals in 3 games based on their underlying stats, but if those all came in games against Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Swansea then it doesn't necessarily mean they will enjoy future success when the opponents get tougher. This is implicitly factored into the player projections , which are based on individual opponents but there are holes in the model that can need to be recognized. For example, the model allocates a team's projected shots to individual p...