PLFantasy

Looking back at last season Reputation as a high scoring team is not totally justified ranking just 10th at home with 1.58 GPG and 6th on the road (1.32 GPG ). They did however only fail to score 8 times, a mark that tied for 4th best in the league Just 8 clean sheets on the season ranked 12th, without much dominance at home (5) or on the road (3). The defense substantially improved in the second half though with 7 clean sheets compared to just 1 in the first half. This was despite conceding the same number of goals in total, so it could be someone of a statistical trick rather than a marked improvement in tactics. Their 'keepers gave decent value last year ranking 11th in P90 and 8th in P$ . Some of this value was derived from Cudicini's cheap minutes which will be gone this year with Friedel's arrival.  Defensive unit was actually more valuable on the road, ranking 8th in P90 (13th at home) and 3rd in P$ (11th at home). This is encouraging as it suggests Sp...

My favourite new tool for evaluating player performance is the Guardian's new chalkboard function which allows you to monitor all the passes, shots, tackles and free kicks made by any player, in any game in the Premier League in the last 4 seasons (updated within hours of any games this season). This allows you to see how a player is performing when you can't see the game and whether he is getting goalscoring opportunities and is playing in the right part of the field. For example, if you are choosing between two centre backs and you can see that one had 2 headers per game in the opposition box and the other had six, then it is clear that the team is game planning to get the ball to that defender (like Laursen last year) and he is therefore more likely to score. Equally, if a midfield player (say, Jon Obi Mikel) plays 90% of his passes in and around the centre circle, he is unlikely to ever contribute more than performance points and clean sheets. Modric v Lennon Having only s...

So here is the final team previews, brought to you just one day before the start of the new season (apologies for cutting things a bit close). I will post later tonight a review of all the last minute injury news, as well as tweeting them tomorrow morning before the 11:30 deadline. Today's previews lack the star power of yesterday but plenty of bargains can be found, and each team has something to offer Sunderland Projected Team: Fulop, McCartney, Collins, Ferdinand, Bardsley, Richardson, Cattermole, Cana, Malbranque, Bent, Jones After being given a substantial war chest by the board, Steve Bruce has spent very well on Weirside and his team look stronger than they ever have. It would not be surprising at all to see Sunderland pushing Fulham and West Ham for top half spots rather than scrapping at the wrong end of the table. At the back the team is largely unchanged, which is disappointing for a team who ranked just 13th in total defense (16th home, 12th away) last season. Paolo de ...

Back on October 4 th I made a few recommendations of players to buy to make a capital gain over the coming weeks. The 'portfolio' saw initial success, but a month on it is time to look at the players and see how they've performed. I will then make some more predictions for the coming weeks. Portfolio performance Here's the tips I made back on October 4 th :Not too shabby at all (especially in today's economic climate). I would have removed the sell rating on Bent a couple of weeks ago too, and in fact he's on the shortlist to be a buy at the moment (as first noted by blog reader SilentJay ). Of course, at premierleague .com you only realise half the price rise as profit, but still, its over a million made in a month that could make the difference between a Sol Campbell and a Gael Clichy , or a Joe Hart and a Pepe Reina. Of the above tips I think Ronaldo has perhaps a small margin to rise, so I consider him a hold. I think Zaki ha reached his ceiling for now...