PLFantasy

With the proliferation of Opta and multiple news sources starting to dip their proverbial toes into the world of statistical analysis, casual fans have access to a greater depth of data than at any point before. Converting that data into useful information therefore comes more and more into focus and that’s why we need to review any proposed “advanced” metrics to ensure they remain relevant and as accurate as possible (all while acknowledging we are a long way from even touching the kind of analytics that are prevalent in other sports). Before we go on it should also be noted that any reference to terms like “advanced” should be taken lightly. By “advanced” I mean, slightly more useful than looking at the “goals scored” chart and assuming that the past explains the future. I am not a stats professor nor even a student and more complex models surely exist which might shave a point or two off the margin of error from the analysis in these electronic pages. However, I believe the output...

If you direct your attention to the navigation bar you will note that there is now a new link to the team plus-minus page. I've added a brief summary below but it's a pretty simple principle. One word of caution: the data is based solely on 2015-16 data so the sample sizes are ludicrously small. That said, these numbers (particularly with penalty box touches and total shots) do stabilise relatively quickly so it's worth at least having a glance at these numbers in the coming weeks if you are worried that your initial assessment of a team is a bit off (are Chelsea really struggling? Are Leicester for real?). Workings Plus-minus (+/-) is a very simple metric which simply tries to adjust stats to put them in a context of a team's opponents to date. For example, we might note that two teams have each registered five shots on goal per game and conclude they are of equal ability but if one team did it against Man City and Everton while the other did it against Norwich and...

Alright, enough is enough. While I'm concerned about delving into data too soon and reaching all sorts of ridiculous small-sample-driven conclusions, I'm equally conscious that people want to start making big decisions with their respective teams and thus it's time to launch the weekly rankings and forecasts (still with that small sample asterisk though). Before that, let's look at a new addition to the weekly forecasts. With most of the forecasts we do on this site, there are two distinct parts to the puzzle: What is the expected volume of an underlying event (normally we focus on shots, shots on target etc) What is the impact of those events on actual footballing events (i.e. goals, assists and clean sheets). With goals we've spent a reasonable amount of time talking about how we forecast shots and how we convert those expected totals into goals, but I've tended to neglect the defensive side of the game. This had led to the unfortunate position where t...

The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, I want to illustrate a point I've made before in graphical form and highlight a couple of players coming out of that analysis. Second, I want to give a little bit of narrative around regression to the mean and issue a word of caution as to where I'm seeing it misapplied fairly regularly in these stat-friendly times. From some quick research over the top forwards in the league, we see that, generally, they haven't really shown an ability to consistently convert shots on target (SoT) into goals above the league average rate . The league average hovers around the 33% mark for forwards and 28% mark for midfielders, with very few players able to exceed those totals each year (and even then that would be expected purely based on statistical variance). In short then, whether it seems intuitive or not, if a player's SoT are turning into goals at a very high rate, we must expect some  regression in the coming weeks. Now then, a q...

Those of you wise enough to monitor Shots on Target may have noticed earlier a post regarding a new case study we're doing to compare our respective models against actual results. At this stage there's not much to do other than post our projections, so here they are: The idea of these few posts will be to try and identify areas where the respective models can be improved, specifically with regards to the process  rather than just the results . With just five games to work with we're not going to make wholesale changes to the models if they say Suarez will score twice and he scores four, so long as the underlying data looks reasonable and any significant variances can be explained. One area that has already been highlighted to me if how to translate defensive goal forecasts into points. As you know, my points model only looks at midfielders and forwards and then I separately forecast goals conceded. The problem with that approach, now I think about in detail, is ill...

WARNING : This post is going to skew long  and won't contain any directly relevant fantasy advice to help you make your transfers this week. It might get a bit nerdy at times, though I'm far from classically trained in statistics so the concepts, if not always the terminology, should be accessible to all. I also won't reach any definitive conclusion as these models are a work in progress. Any input on anything not considered below or anywhere where you disagree with any conclusions can be posted in the comments or over at Shots on Target where you'll find a handy forum to discuss these issues. We're also only looking at forecasting goals here, assists will need a separate post. Tracking historic success The way I look at it, there are three distinct ways to track historic success: Historic classic stats (goals, assists etc) Historic fantasy points (similar to classic stats but accounting for all fantasy relevant events) Historic underlying stats (a much de...

Shots on target per 90 minutes (minimum 3 starts) 1.      Rooney 3.0 2.     Van der Vaart 2.8 3.     Aguero 2.4 4.     Dzeko 2.4 5.     Adebayor 2.3 6.     Van Persie 2.2 7.     Defoe 2.1 8.     Anelka 1.9 9.     Suarez 1.5 10. Di Santo 1.5 We've seen that correlation between shots on target and goals is (unsurprisingly) strong and the majority of the above players have benefited from that fact. Van der Vaart and Di Santo stand out for me and deserve a couple of words. Owned by just 3% of managers, Van der Vaart is somewhat of a forgotten fantasy force but the above indicates his lack of goals is not through a lack of trying. In his career, Van der Vaart is averaging a goal every 4 shots on target so if he carries on his current pace (9 shots on target in just 287 minutes) he should see his points tally start to rise quick...