PLFantasy

Gameweek 1 has been somewhat less dramatic than last season. With the new Friday kick off and a solid day of Saturday action under our belts I went to bed on August 12th just like any other Saturday night. A few hours later I was woken by my wife who was in labour - 7 weeks before our due date. A few more hours later our twin girls appeared and let's just say that questions around Gabriel Jesus's playing time or Paul Pogba's xG suddenly seemed somewhat trivial. Needless to say, the past year has meant I've had less time to dedicate to fantasy football, although the early starts on the weekend make watching the 7am ET games much easier. Over the offseason I have been debating how, if at all, this blog can continue to offer value. With the prevalence of Opta's xG, my own version of a similar (but more basic) model becomes somewhat irrelevant and my absence from England means that I will never be as up to date on team news as those who live in the city, read the loca...

Elite forwards It was quite a week for the league's leading forwards with five of the seven 10 million pound men all finding the back of the net at least once (the other two - Jesus and Zlatan - were not in action). Kane owners were feeling smug after his 13 point haul in the early game, only for him to be eclipsed by Morata and almost matched by Aguero later in the day, while Lacazette sent a reminder to the league that he is another talented option with a brace on Monday night. There is an emerging theory that one must  own three of these elite options, and make up the difference elsewhere in your team with reasonably priced defenders and budget midfield options. While I understand this logic, I would not be so fast to dismiss the midfield elite with Sanchez and Hazard returning to their sides and the likes of Eriksen and Salah putting in quality performances every week. The wisdom of this argument will likely only be settled with hindsight. What we can review is which ...

The below visualization shows the share of their team's shots inside the box (SiB) and created chances (CC) each player have accounted for this season. The share represents only the games when the player was on the field so as to not penalise them for missing games. This also therefore means that the total team percentage will not add up to 100%. While shots inside the box are generally more valuable than those from outside, this data does not control for quality beyond that, so an overly trigger happy player like Andy Carroll might appear more valuable than he is, while a clinical finisher like Aguero might be underrated. Still, the idea here is provide a quick sense check as to where players rank within their respective teams. We often see people cite team A's superior fixtures to team B as the key reason to select player A over player B, but this misses the impact of the likelihood of these players benefiting from their team's favourable fixtures, which I hope this p...

Quick note: One of the reasons I restarted the blog this year was that my wife and I were expecting twins in late September so I knew I would be home a lot more with plenty of sleepless hours available to mindlessly consume football matches. Well, the twins didn't think this was a great idea and decided to convert xTwins into Twins on August 13th. This means I've been a bit delayed rolling out some of the models and ideas I had to kick off the season but once we get into a routine I will ramp up the content a bit. I like to think that they are already concerned about the potential issues around small sample sizes and wanted to force me to wait until the season was a few weeks old before overreacting. Selecting defenders and 'keepers requires a different strategy to your attacking options, given that so much of their value is locked up in their team's performance. Of course, playing on a good team will help any player but while it's possible to have a lot of succes...

As democracies teeter on the edge of existence around the world and once-eradicated diseases return due to an apparent loss-of-uptake of vaccinations, we appear to be in a time where the masses are losing faith in experts. Scientists, journalists and those steeped in the scientific process are being drowned out by those who "go with their gut" and follow their id . I am here to stand up for the experts, though alas, I am not one. Those more learned than I will quickly realise that this blog is the work of a child in his father's suit trying to close business deals (actually, that might work these days). Still, you've made it this far so you might as well stay for a bit of analysis, even if my statistical base knowledge is formed from watching archived Harvard lectures and reading old Fangraphs posts.  For those just joining us, I ran this blog for a number of seasons but took last season off. I have built a reasonable, though hardly sophisticated model to try a...

Powered by Tableau Captain Picks I'm still working on the calculations for some data-based captain picks, so for now let's stick to some good ol' narrative. I've kept the ramblings to notebook form for the sake of your time and my sanity: Eden Hazard vs Stoke (39% vote as FFS ) P90 of 12.0 at home after two games at Chelsea . . . scored or assisted 5 of Chelsea's 6 goals at Stamford Bridge . . . Stoke have been typically solid at home (1 goal conceded against City and 0 versus Arsenal) but have been mediocre on the road (3 goals in 2 games against Wigan and Reading) . . . 43% ownership means that picking Hazard will have limited gains while not picking him comes with a large risk . . . played full 90 minutes against Juventus midweek with Mata and Moses both rested so rotation risk if a slight concern . . . underlying stats are excellent (12 shots, 3 on target and 10 chances created) but aren't better than some of the other elite talent . . . penalt...

One of the first ideas I wrote about on the blog was the idea of utilizing two budget 'keepers to deliver the same value as one elite player. As a quick reminder, the basic premise of the strategy is that: A player's opponent has a strong influence on his weekly success and thus if you select players whose fixtures 'gel' well together, you can maximise the number of games played against weaker opponents. If you select an elite keeper, you still need to spend at least 4.0m on your second keeper who will likely never see the light of day. Hence, to enjoy the right to play Joe Hart every week will cost you at least 11.0m where as playing a pair of average players in the best circumstances will set you back 10.0m or even less. It's tricky to predict how teams will perform this year using only prior year statistics, but by and large we can get a decent idea of what to expect as teams rarely change dramatically on a yearly basis. The calculation for the promoted t...

Though I started with the promoted teams , it makes more sense to start at the top as in reality this is how the majority of owners build their teams (insert their superstars first then surround them with as much mid range or budget talent as they can). I’ve included five teams here so that each post is comparatively long but really a sub division has arisen within the elite: the two Manchester powerhouses and the London clubs playing catchup. Note, the projected lineups are far from certain and where I don’t know who will play I haven’t really dwelled on it, and neither should you. If you aren’t convinced a player will start the season in the first eleven he should be nowhere near your starting lineup. This isn’t a league where you draft for December, you need to earn points in GW1 just as much as GW21. Players highlighted as being on my personal shortlist are shown in  blue with those who I believe to be secure in the starting eleven shown in bold . Division 1a: Manch...

Here we go again. Enjoy your last few stress-free Friday evenings, fill your mind with philosophical musings about the meaning of life and soak up those precious sun rays while you still can (that one might not apply to readers in Manchester), for we all know those freedoms will end in just a mere matter of weeks. The annual release of the pl.com player price list marks the start of the footballing season for me, and that landmark event is now in the rear view mirror for 2012 (By the way, how is this day  still   not  a public holiday? Honestly, wouldn't you have preferred a day to tinker with your team than watch Tom Jones and Suggs sing to the Queen?). It's also the first time in a couple of months that I've faced the reality of a Bolton-less Premier League, though   I'm sure most of you will get over that one quicker than me. Silver lining fans may well note that at least I will avoid the twinge of guilt when a small part of me is satisfied with a Van Persie ...

Anyone who has followed my  Twitter  feed over the past few months knows I am big baseball fan, specifically with regards to the statistical side of the game. I am also a big proponent of trying to use lessons from one sport to help us understand or improve another (the Premier League’s stubbornness in ignoring the success stories of officials, salary caps, transfer rules etc from other sports is a huge source on frustration for me). The statistical awareness in baseball is possibly the best of any sport in the world, with legions of fans (and team employees) dreaming up new ways to measure players and hopefully identify undervalued assets and commodities (the now over, and often incorrectly, used term ‘moneyball’ attempts to convey this thought process). One term you will quickly come across if you ever decided to visit a statistically leaning site like  FanGraphs , would be ‘regression to the mean’. I am no statistician so I apologize to anyone that is if the below is...

Looking back at last season Provided decent value at the back with 9 clean sheets, evenly spread between home (4) and away (5). Failed to score in 10 games, though only 3 of these were at St James' Park where the Magpies are deadly. 2.16 GPG at home was second only to Man Utd Not a great deal of production from the 'keepers (2.8 PPG ) though they did deliver decent value as Harper and particularly Krul came at a very low price. The defensive unit provided decent value for money (9th in P$ ) and made useful spot starters. Whoever solidifies there place in the side alongside Coloccini and Jose Enrique should provide decent value again, particular is it's any of the 4.0m options. The midfield was also fairly average (13th in PPG and P$ ), especially when you take out bonus magnets Barton and Nolan Amazingly, the front line gave the best value in the league with a P$ of 1.33. The problem was that the points were widely dispersed between 4 or 5 players, without muc...