Gameweek 30 Preview
Learn About Tableau
Posts
Gameweek 10 Preview
The revised strategy for this season is to post the weekly preview data as soon as possible, giving you (a) the chance to use it to help with any early transfer decisions and (b) to collate questions on why a given player is so low or high, to be answered on Fridays before the transfer deadline. Learn About Tableau
Gameweek 9 Preview
Learn About Tableau Given how early in the season we are, the model is still liable to throw up the odd outlier and so in these weekly posts I plan to address those, shall we say, unexpected results. In future weeks, the plan is to post the data as soon as possible after the final games' data is up and then you can raise questions/issues during the week, to be addressed on either the following Thursday or Friday. For this week, I'll just try and guess where the questions might lie: Keiren Westwood Sunderland have conceded at least two goals in six straight contests, yet the model thinks they'll do okay this week. What gives? Well, having conceded 7.3 shots inside the box at home, they're hardly a team without hope (that alone would be the 9th best total of the teams playing this week). Add to that the fact that Newcastle have averaged 30% less SiB against their opponents than average, while only averaging 6.0 SiB on their travels, and you get a game where w...
Gameweek 8 forecast
Learn About Tableau Risk slider - this season each player is assigned a risk rating, based on their playing time and current injury status (as explained here ). There's no reason to definitely exclude all risky players, but you should consider their playing time before pulling the trigger with them. I've had a couple of questions about a couple of the 'odd' forecasts above, namely Loic Remy's lofty status and how Sturridge out ranks Suarez. I'll address those in more detail tomorrow but wanted to get the data out now.
Do defences really strengthen as the season progresses?
As we continue to look back at last season, we turn our attention to the defensive side of the game. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s held as a self-evident fact, but it is widely stated that teams tend to ‘tighten up’ at the back over the winter period, with goals being harder to come by and, by definition, clean sheets more prevalent. Such information will obviously be useful in ascertaining when to spend big on your defense and when to use your funds elsewhere, so let’s take a look at the numbers, starting with the 2011-12 season: The high home totals stand out in chart one (as in line with the hypothesis) but the graphs aren’t the easiest to quickly deduce information from, so we can add some lines of best fit to get a more telling result: The data tells a totally different story to the standard narrative, with goals per game conceded increasing during the early-middle portion of the season, and clean sheets kept down accordingly. We can also observe a...
Gameweek 23 Preview
Don't forget that there are no games this weekend with the next deadline coming next Tuesday for a full midweek slate. That gives us a couple of days so hopefully I'll have a couple of extra pieces up this week. Weekly rankings are below. <a href="#"><img alt="Weekly Rankings " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/We/WeeklyRankings/WeeklyRankings/1_rss.png" style="border: none" /></a> Powered by Tableau CS Clean sheets kept at home/away based on this week's fixture Opp FTS Number of times this week's opponent has failed to score at home/away GPG Conceded Predicted goals conceded this week based on a team and their opponent's performa...
Winter Wondering
Common sense would lead us to believe that goals per game should decrease in the winter months. The best teams start to 'settle down' and 'make their push' for the title while rainy nights in Stoke get harder to manage as the elements take their toll on the playing surfaces. However, 'common sense' can often lead us astray so I thought we should look at the actual numbers. The percentage of games in which teams keep clean sheets has been pretty consistent over the years: 2007-08 29% 2008-09 33% 2009-10 29% 2010-11 25% 2011-12 26% If you limit games to just January and February, we can see the impact of the winter months: Over 80 games in January and February these trends are going to lead to 4 or 5 extra clean sheets, which is promising but nothing to get overly excited about. What though, if we limit our search to the 'big teams', the ones who are supposed to be locking i...
Strength of Schedule
Each individual team's strength of schedule has been referenced in the team previews posted so far, but with the season drawing ever closer, I thought it might be useful to gather all that information into one spot, for quick reference. A couple of points about that data below: Goals per game scored and conceded are largely based on prior year, though I have allowed a small adjustment where significant transfer activity has occurred or a key player has returned to fitness. Generally though, if you think a team will be substantially better/worse than last year, you will need to make the adjustment when you look at the data
For the promoted sides I have taken their record from last season and applied a historic ratio based on how promoted teams goals scored decline and goals conceded increase after getting promoted. Again, if you have strong views that one of these teams will perform particularly better or worse than the historical average, make the adjustments when looking at the...
Gameweek 38 Preview
It's a sad day when the season ends, particularly when the title race is over. However, for me, the excitement is just as high (or higher) at the other end of the table and so there's plenty to keep watching for. Oh, and there's the small matter of the last fantasy gameweek to deal with. Hopefully everyone has their mini leagues wrapped up by now (okay maybe not) but just in case, the weekly rankings are below. Clean Sheet Rankings Man Utd Stoke Tottenham Aston Villa West Ham Chelsea Bolton Newcastle Wolves Everton Sunderland Man City Liverpool Arsenal Fulham Wigan Birmingham Blackburn West Brom Blackpool Attacking Rankings Man Utd Tottenham Chelsea Arsenal Liverpool Wolves Aston Villa West Brom Fulham Man City Sunderland Newcastle West Ham Blackburn Wigan Stoke Bolton Blackpool Everton Birmingham I will have to cut the preview short this week as I head down to Florida for a few days, but I would like to take the chance to thank ...
Gameweek 34 Preview
Clean Sheet Rankings (clean sheets kept - opponents failed to score in parenthesis) Chelsea (10 - 8) Man Utd (9 - 4) Stoke* (2 - 4) and (5 - 6) Fulham* (3 - 3) and (8 - 5) Liverpool (7 - 4) Aston Villa (6 - 8) Tottenham (5 - 7) Sunderland (7 - 8) Blackburn (6 - 6) Wolves* (3 - 6) and (2 - 3) Man City (4 - 4) Blackpool (0 - 6) Wigan (3 - 3) Bolton* (5 - 2) and (0 - 3) Arsenal (4 - 3) Newcastle (5 - 0) Birmingham (3 - 1) West Brom (0 - 4) Everton (3 - 0) West Ham (1 - 2) * = double gameweek Attacking Rankings (expected goals in parenthesis) Chelsea (2.48) Stoke (2.44)* Fulham (2.36)* Tottenham (2.21) Bolton (2.07)* Arsenal (1.94) Man Utd (1.64) Liverpool (1.62) Wolves (1.60)* Aston Villa (1.50) Blackpool (1.44) West Brom (1.39) Newcastle (1.21) Man City (1.15) Blackburn (1.13) Everton (1.07) Wigan (0.92) Birmingham (0.89) Sunderland (0.82) West Ham (0.75) * = double gameweek Captain Stats The stars seen to have aligned f...
Gameweek 33 Preview
Is your season slipping falling away like a North London club with all the promise seemingly doomed to result in nothing? Are your loyal fans starting to turn on you after you once again handed to the armband to the slumping Drogba over the red-hot Van Persie? Is your loyalty to the increasingly leaky Sunderland defense causing murmurs in the stands that you've lost the confidence of the board? Well, unlike our real manager counterparts, fantasy managers have a golden opportunity this week to turn things round with three double gameweeks and 5 teams out of action. Hopefully you made some preparations for this week and so you're not sat holding Tevez, Davies and Jones as your talented but absent front line. Even the best planning though may have left you needing a quick fix so I urge you to take a peak here for some ideas of some one week mercenaries to fill out your match day lineup. Before settling on transfers though, we of course need to know who are the best plays of th...