PLFantasy

This could be a big week for our fantasy teams as the double gameweeks start rolling in , new arrivals start playing and the teams start to sort out who are contenders and pretenders. Plenty of owners will be looking to play their wildcards this week so I thought I should get the weekly rankings up as soon as possible which along with the aforementioned double gameweek analysis, should give everyone plenty of food for thought before they plan their final assault on the league table. Along with the standard weekly rankings, I have included the rankings for the next 6 weeks and the remainder of the season. Clean Sheet Rankings (GW24) (clean sheets kept and opponents' failed to score in parenthesis) Man United (6 - 3) and (3 - 0) Arsenal (3 - 5) Fulham (4 - 3) and (3 - 1) Everton (3 - 6) Blackburn (4 - 5) Blackpool (0 - 4) and (0 - 3) Liverpool (2 - 1) and (4 - 4)  Wigan (3 - 2) and (2 - 5)  Aston Villa (4 - 3) and (0 - 3) Wolves (2 - 4) Man City (4 - 3) Bolton (2 ...

Clean Sheet Rankings (clean sheets kept - opponents failed to score) Man City (7 - 4) Sunderland (7 - 2) Chelsea (7 - 2) Birmingham (4 - 5) Liverpool (4 - 3) Fulham (3 - 3) Stoke (3 - 3) Arsenal (3 - 1) Tottenham (3 - 2) Wigan (2 - 4) Bolton (0 - 3) West Brom (1 - 5) Blackpool (5 - 2) Everton (2 - 1) Man Utd (2 - 2) Newcastle (3 - 2) Aston Villa (0 - 4) Wolves (1 - 3) West Ham (3 - 2) Blackburn (0 - 1) Attacking Rankings Man City Arsenal Chelsea Birmingham Tottenham Stoke Sunderland Blackpool Fulham West Brom Man Utd Blackburn Bolton West Ham Wigan Everton Newcastle Aston Villa Liverpool Wolves Captain Stats I keep suggesting it could be a statistical anomaly but Van der Vaart continues to crush mid level teams (between 1 and 1.5 GPG conceded) for 9.57 PPG. Given that he is also averaging over 7 PPG at home and 8 PPG over his last 4 games, he remains an excellent option at home this week despite the tricky fixture on paper.  Despite th...

No time to breathe or dwell on GW 21 (which was fairly successful by recent standards) as the EPL action continues on a short week. The highlight for most will be the double gameweeks for Blackpool and Liverpool, who both also enjoy a double in GW24 (some thoughts on them below). Clean Sheet Rankings The rank order is based on the normal form adjusted expected goals per game. In parenthesis you can find the number of clean sheets (at home/away) by the listed team and the number of times the oppositon has failed to score (at home/away) Man Utd (6 - 3) Blackpool* (1 - 3) and (1 - 4) Blackburn (4 - 4) Bolton (2 - 5) Newcastle (2 - 5) Aston Villa (4 - 4) Chelsea (2 - 1) Fulham (3 - 4) Tottenham (0 - 2) Liverpool (2 - 2) and (2 - 0) Man City (3 - 1) Everton (3 - 2) Wolves (1 - 4) Arsenal (2 - 2) Sunderland (3 - 2) West Brom (0 - 2) Wigan (3 - 2) Birmingham (2 - 0) West Ham (0 - 2) Stoke (2 - 0)  *double gameweek Team Goal Rankings (form adjusted) Man City Bl...

At time of posting I am working on the basis that all games will go ahead as planned this week, though at least the Blackpool-Liverpool game is already looking doubtful. More updates on this will of course come later in the week but I would recommend holding off on your transfers for now and definitely not paying 4 points for any moves until we are more certain who will actually play. Clean Sheet Rankings Fulham Man Utd Blackburn Wolves Blackpool Everton Aston Villa Birmingham Arsenal Man City Bolton West Ham  Wigan Stoke Chelsea Newcastle Tottenham Liverpool Sunderland West Brom Team Goals Bolton Man Utd Blackpool Aston Villa Man City Arsenal Blackburn Wolves Fulham West Brom Newcastle Chelsea Everton Tottenham Birmingham Liverpool Wigan Stoke Sunderland West Ham Team Goals (form adjusted) Bolton Man Utd Man City Blackpool West Brom Blackburn Everton Arsenal Tottenham Chelsea Liverpool Fulham Birmingham Newcastle Stoke A...

Sorry for the delay again this week, some joker at my job has got it in his head that any of those pesky clients are worth more than fantasy football rankings. Has he seen my team? I haven't topped 50 points for five weeks. Five weeks! Hopefully the below will help: Clean Sheet Rankings Sunderland Chelsea Liverpool Blackburn Arsenal Birmingham Stoke Man City West Brom Bolton Tottenham Wigan Newcastle Wolves Everton Fulham West Ham Aston Villa Attacking rankings (team goals) Liverpool (2.67) Sunderland (1.87) Arsenal (1.76) Chelsea (1.76) Blackburn (1.66) West Brom (1.42) Stoke (1.36) Birmingham (1.25) Man City (1.14) Newcastle (0.93) Bolton (0.82) Wigan (0.78) Tottenham (0.74) Fulham (0.67) Aston Villa (0.44) Wolves (0.44) Everton (0.31) West Ham (0.30) Captain Stats Tevez - Tevez has strangely been a lot better away from Eastlands (7.43 PPG) than at home (4.86 PPG) but has been very useful against sides conceding more than 1.5 GPG (7.25...

No rambling this week as I've been moving home with boxes stacked high and much upheaval. This isn't unlike my fantasy team which is chaotic and unpredictable and might need a renovation of it's own very soon. I was saved last week by Vidic and Adam's performances but cruelly punished by last minute goals conceded by Williamson and Jaaskelainen. As you have hopefully noticed I am starting to re-design the site a bit to give everyone constant access to the stats I try and incorporate into my work. I have started with the aPPMS and aPoints to the right of this post and I will be adding short and long term strength of schedules soon. Any requests for specific data to be posted would be welcomed. Without further delay then, here are this week's rankings: Clean Sheet Rankings (expected goals conceded in parenthesis) Birmingham (0.28) Sunderland (0.38) Man Utd (0.40) Blackburn (0.60) Fulham (0.64) Arsenal (0.69) Chelsea (0.98) West Brom (1.02) Everton (1.0...

I'm putting all the design nonsense to one side to get down to some actual fantasy writing. As I'm sure most of you are chomping at the bit to get into your transfers/lineups so I will get straight down to business. Clean Sheet Rankings Aston Villa (0.43) Arsenal (0.49) Chelsea (0.56) Man City (0.69) Everton (0.72) Bolton (0.72) Newcastle (0.72) Fulham (0.77) Man Utd (0.82) Blackburn (1.26) Wolves (1.26) Wigan (1.60) Blackpool (1.72) Liverpool (1.74) Stoke (1.93) Sunderland (1.95) Birmingham (2.05) Tottenham (2.44) West Brom (2.79) West Ham (4.53) Captain Rankings Cesc Fabregas: Arsenal are the top rated team for the week with an expected 4.5 goals. Arsenal have scored 10 league goals with Fabregas on the pitch this season and he has scored or assisted three of them. This would suggest he should notch points this week and I wouldn't bet against him getting one of each, even after his penalty miss last week. Dimitar Berbatov: 38 points in 4 home ga...

Clean Sheet Rankings I'm changing things a little but this week as along with the standard statistical predictions for goals conceded, I have also worked in some of the goal trends that I noted earlier in the week in order to generate my weekly rankings. I have looked for concrete trends based on statistical fact so these are not 'hunches' but more tweaked facts to incorporate the wider trends. Newcastle v Sto 0.34 Birmingham v Wig 0.44 Liverpool v Sun 0.43* Arsenal v WBA 0.50 Aston Villa @Wol 0.79* Man Utd @Bol 0.93* Fulham v Eve 0.71 Blackpool v Bla 0.77 Wolves v Ast 0.91 Chelsea @MnC 1.36 Man City v Che 1.47 Everton @Ful 1.48 Tottenham @WH 1.57 Wigan @Bir 1.93* West Ham v Tot 1.67 Stoke @New 1.81 Blackburn @Bll 1.82 Bolton v MnU 2.04 Sunderland @Liv 2.79 West Brom @Ars 4.17 *denotes a team whose ranking has been altered based on specific trend analysis noted below. I have capped these movements to 3 positions to avoid basing the rankings on ‘gut’ r...

The pessimist in me is wondering where I go from here after a very successful first week in which my predictions did well and my team dominated to a three digit score . However, I am going to be positive and look to have another good week of predictions and hope to show that last week was no fluke (in reality it was probably was a fluke, as my countless failed predictions in the past show). One thing I didn't focus on last week, which I now wish I had, is the prediction tool I use to create my clean sheet rankings. Without getting too bogged down in Excel nonsense, the basic idea is to break down teams historic performance at home/away, against other teams and against certain types of team along with the corresponding data for their opponents. To get the historic data for the promoted sides I used a historic relationship between teams' performance in the EPL and the Championship to try and gross up/net down the expected goals conceded/scored. Anyway, the poin...

Well that went well. One of my better week of predictions is in the bag and Pure Juice sit 113th out of close to 2 million managers having managed six goals and four clean sheets on opening weekend. Unfortunately I don't think I have struck some sort of fantasy blueprint to be applied in all future weeks - more than I got a bit lucky and applied some fundamental principles that hold true for the coming weeks too: While I cautioned earlier about using minutes played as a sure fire barometer for future success, during these opening weeks when team selections are unsettled from prior season, it is essential to go with the sure things and try and avoid trying to discover the next big thing too early. That is why - as some of you have correctly pointed out - I somewhat deviated from my normal strategy of cheaper defenders and brought in Vidic and Terry for opening weekend (this was also due to saving some cash swapping Van Persie to Berbatov quite late on after it becam...

Before we get stuck into gameweek 32, I am going to quickly fly through my top strikers for the remainder of the season, as promised yesterday. I also urge, nay implore you to look at yesterday's ramblings on midfielders which while somewhat of a Cesc-love-fest contains at least a few useful stats for your amusement. I am limiting this discussion to the big three strikers (Torres, Drogba and Rooney) though that is not a slight on the prospects of Tevez, Bent etc, more that most of us can only afford to employ one or at most two of these stud strikers and so we really need to know which one (or two) we should hitch our wagon to. It must also be noted that Van Persie still leads all strikers with 7.7 PPG, an astonishing stat given the plaudits Rooney (7.4 PPG) has received this year. While some reports are suggesting Van Persie may be back before the end of the season I will only entertain the prospect of spending 10m+ on a player when he is a lock to start, which just isn't th...

dif ·fer·en·ti·a· tion (n) 1. The act, process, or result of differentiating 2. The process of computing a derivative. 3. The process by which cells or tissues undergo a change toward a more specialized form or function, especially during embryonic development. I hope you all captained Rooney or Fabregas this week! I'm pleased to say t his pair were my top 2 captain picks for the week though judging from most of the mini leagues I am in, they were also everyone else's pick. Pure Juice scored 128 points this week and lost ground in the main competition thanks to the double game-weeks of Arsenal and United. The week served to underline the fact that most teams now have an overlap of at least 4 or 5 players with 7 players owned by 30% of more of all managers. Consider that a number of managers at the bottom of the league have probably not kept up to date and you realise that in reality over half of all your competitors probably most own these players: Rooney (44%) Sorensen (...

16:09 Back under way in the Premier League with no notable substitutions to comment on. 16:12 100 league goals for Lampard as the goals keep flowing at Stamford Bridge. Lampard is in delicious form and is a must have for fantasy teams if your budget will stretch to it. I can almost feel the 3 bonus points. 16:13 Anelka hattrick! Okay so maybe it'll be 2 bonus points for Lamps. Another assist for Malouda too. Chelsea are rampant 5-0. 16:16 Bednar makes a claim to the top sub-6m striker title with his 4th of the season. At 5.4 he might be worth a look. 16:17 United get their 4th through Vidic, assisted by Rooney. That's Vidic's first this season. 16:22 West Brom take the lead as they punish 10 man Blackburn, no points for identifying the turning point of that game! This time its a sub-5m man, Ishmael Miller, who has tempted me in the past. If he continues to play he is a steal at 4.9m. Only the second time this season the Baggies have bagged two. 16:26 As we stand Pure Juice ...

Teams of the week Blackburn vs Man Utd I rarely recommend players on the road as time has told us that even the best are less productive away from home. However, I get the impression United are simmering right now and are ready to explode over the next few weeks . Rovers have conceded 5 in three home games, though did manage a clean sheet last time out against Fulham . Ronaldo is the obvious choice to capitalise here though I also like Berbatov this week after his brace against Aalborg in mid-week . Despite little fan fair, Berbatov has notched 2 assists and 3 bonus points in his 3 games for United and looks good ton continue this form this week. Blackburn have aso scored just 2 in three home games which makes the United back line a good play. Van der Sar is decent value at 5.9 and I still like Evra at 6.5. The wild card pick could be O'Shea at 5.5, who could deputise in midfield due to injuries to Scholes, Carrick and Hargreaves. I am hopeful that Anderson will break into the firs...