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...

Over an eight day period last week, Man City thumped their three opponents by a combined score of 15-0, with Liverpool, Feyenoord and Watford unable to contend with Guardiola's men. It goes without saying that City were extremely impressive in these games and fantasy football managers are obviously taking note with Aguero and Jesus shooting to the top of many managers' transfer target lists (at the time of writing some 440,000 managers had already brought in Aguero and another 90,000 have targeted Jesus). The point of this post is not to suggest that these transfers are incorrect - indeed I might follow suit myself - but I did want to run over a few facts to maybe turn the temperature down on the need to make these moves right now. The chart below shows the expected points each of the listed elite forwards have registered through the first 5 gameweeks. You can see Aguero's terrific GW5 effort eclipsing his rivals this past week but you will also note that Kane has three ...