PLFantasy

At this point of the year it's important that we try and establish what numbers can be believed. In other words: how small is too small for a sample size? Consider, for example, that through six gameweeks last season: Aston Villa ranked 10th in goals scored at home and 3rd on the road. They wound up being the 2nd worst attacking side in the league, managing to notch just one goal more than Stoke.  Tottenham placed 19th in home defense, shipping an average of 2.5 goals per game. They finished the year as one of the league's best defenses, ranking 4th at home and 5th on the road. QPR conceded just one goal in their first three away games. They went on to concede 40 more in the next 16, at an alarming rate of 2.5 a game, enough to rank behind everyone outside of lowly Blackburn. We could go on and on. The point being, six games is not enough to write teams off or buy into short lived success. When then, is long enough? Using data from the past two seasons (ideally we'...

I meant to post this a few days back but I was having some troubles with Tableau (my skill level not the software, which is great). Anyway, here are the forecasts goals per game for the first ten gameweeks of the season based purely on prior year data.  The calculation uses a combination of a team's own defense and the strength of the opposition to generate the expected goals scored/conceded. I haven't made any adjustments for transfers, manager changes etc as that is all too subjective and if I overlay my personal opinions on the relative strengths of the new arrivals then the data just becomes an extension of my own biases which are helpful to no one. If you believe that Tottenham will be much better with Vertonghen in defense then feel free to make the mental adjustments yourself. For the promoted teams I use a factor to translate their Championship data into a Premier League expectation. This is explained in more detail here . Note that for the GW1 double gameweeks, ...

<a href="#"><img alt="Weekly Rankings " src="http://public.tableausoftware.com/static/images/We/WeeklyRankings25/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 performance this season Opp CS Clean sheets kept at home/away by a team's opponent GPG Scored Predicted goals scored this week based on ...

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...

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...