PLFantasy

As alluded to in last week's post about Guardiola's "wild" rotation (or lack thereof), I am currently of the opinion that the various City options that are available (plus a couple of other elite players around the league) are so  good that it is worth absorbing the inevitable rotation hits that come, even as those punches start to increase in number over the busy holiday period. One of the risks and possible downsides here is that with rotation generally not being something one can plan around (unlike, say, actual injuries or suspensions), the characteristics of your bench need to be tweaked somewhat. Two key points need to be changed in my own personal bench strategy. First, I need to pay more attention to it. I am generally pretty focused on maintaining a good substitute keeper that rotates nicely with the other option and then one other sub, but after that I do not prioritise having a deep bench. Second, because you won't necessarily be able to choose when ...

There seems to be a growing chorus that Man City players are becoming harder and harder to own due to constant rotation from Pep Guardiola. There are two key pieces of information that are useful to assess how damaging rotation can be to a player: The predictability of when the rotation happens (before of after Champions League games, away from home etc), If not selected for the first team, how often do they come on as a sub. If you have a decent bench then - while frustrating - you can deal with players not playing at all. However, if they consistently come off the bench for only 15 minutes or so then you are lowering your odds at success. Predicting team sheets is not really my forte (nor a particular interest) so we're going to focus on the second point here: We can see four of the City options have spent time on the bench this season while De Bruyne and Silva have been ever present to date. The calculation for this pair is slightly different as you're getting i...

The popularity of "expected goals" as a metric has exploded over the past year or so, with mainstream TV broadcasts now starting to dip their toes in the water of advanced analytics. One inevitable, if slightly unfortunate, consequence is that there are now multiple xG models, which could potentially disagree by a reasonable amount, which to those who need a bit more persuasion as to the merits of statistical analysis, might suggest a lack of accuracy. This has somewhat been the case in baseball with the two big "Wins Above Replacement" (WAR) metrics sometimes disagreeing by a relatively large amount, especially when it comes to valuing pitchers. There is sound methodology behind each metric, of course, but for those who aren't well versed in the intricacies of the debate, the differences can be distracting and serve as fuel for those who want to dismiss analytics and focus on old fashioned "eyeball tests" etc. I, of course, have my own model which p...