PLFantasy

However good a player projection system is, it will always have certain assumptions built in which require some judgement on behalf of the model's creator. This might include how much weight to put on recent games versus historic data or how much to regress team or player conversion rates back to a league or historic average. One such assumption I do not currently factor into my own model is which kind of games a particularly player performs well in. For example, if Harry Kane accounts for 30% of his teams shots inside the box and Spurs are forecast for 10 SiB then his forecast will be three SiB regardless of who the opponents are. The strength of those opponents is of course somewhat baked into how we get to the 10 SiB projection in the first place, but no attention is paid to whether Kane has tended to over or under perform expectations against weaker or stronger teams, or whether he's struggled against teams who deploy three centre backs. The data below takes the first ste...

If you are reading this then you almost certainly own Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian winger has been sensational for Liverpool this season and fantasy managers have responded by adding him to their teams by the thousand. At the time of writing is ownership is up to 51% and his value has increased by almost a million pounds since the game started. Today's piece is not about him though, but his colleague who hopes to operate on the other side of the field - Sadio Mane. A red card, injury and the form of Salah have pushed Mane out of many managers minds, but as teams begin to converge and differentiation becomes increasingly difficult, the Senegal star is a promising option. First, a quick word on Liverpool. I think many people might be hesitant to invest close to 20 million on two Liverpool players (assuming you already have Salah) but I might suggest that fear is misplaced. They've scored just two goals less than Man United, four more than Arsenal, five more than Chelsea and ten ...