PLFantasy

I hope that the old adage about absence and fondness holds true and anyone reading this will still have some time for this little blog in this obscure corner of the internet. I took last season off from fantasy football - basically all football in fact - and now I'm back, armed with a pile of Opta stats and an online subscription to access all the live and archived footage anyone would wish to ingest. Since I last wrote on these pages I've changed careers and I am delighted to be expecting twins in a few weeks. These two factors have come together to shape the direction of the blog for the upcoming season. I am now working in the international development sector and one of the lessons I have learned so far is around comparative advantage - no one is best placed to do everything on their own. Thus I am not going to try and do everything on this site. I am not really going to cover injuries, suspensions or even expected playing time as many other sites are better at this and ha

Three weeks into the new season and everything is pretty much back where we expect it. Man City and their rejuvenated cross-town rivals are flying high, Arsenal fans are panicking about their perceived lack of striking options and I've decided to re-vamp the projection model a bit. Chelsea's seven goals conceded and Leicester's flirtation with the big boys, however, show that there`' still room in this league for variance (however fleeting) and it's in that spirit that I've made the latest changes. I hope the tables are fairly self explanatory, but as a quick background, the focus has been to (a) keep our search for potential flags as wide as possible and then narrow them down with narrative and (b) acknowledge that this entire process is fraught with uncertainty. On the former point, you'll see that I've included four different "projection" metrics to reflect the different identifiers we have for a player's success. For goals, we're

Any time one of the league's better players struggles for goalscoring form and then breaks his drought, you will inevitably hear the commentator point out that while his poor 'form' was temporary, his class is permanent. We aren't here to perform autopsies on former stars of previous decades to suggest their class was anything but permanent, but instead we will examine the very notion of 'form' and how this is reflected in a player's goalscoring record (and hence fantasy success). A player is described as being 'in form' under two distinct scenarios. The first is where a (rare) commentator has actually watched all of that players' games, assessed his overall performance and concluded that he is playing up to his full potential. The second, and much more common occurrence, is where an 'expert', or more pertinently here, a fantasy manager, will assess that a player is in form because he's scored a couple of goals in the last few week

No matter what happens in the world or how I spend my time, the preview article after an international break is like trying to recall what you ate for dinner four weeks ago. Is Aguero still good? What kind of form is Amr Zaki in this year? Did I have pasta three nights running? I recently described Bolton's home form as improving 'a few weeks back', after they hammered Stoke. That's right, I have zero concept of time without my Saturday morning sun dial. Lucky for us, pretty much nothing happened. Suarez was charged followed the alleged racist comments, though Sepp Blatter doesn't seem to be too concerned (is there anything more worrying than the head of any body being (rightfully) scolded by Rio Ferdinand : the beacon on common sense in this whole debate. This might be the sign of the apocalypse Harold Camping was waiting for). Aguero gave us a scare but then played for Argentina. England gave their fans just enough promise to overreact to and thus be crush

Depth is universally seen as a virtue. We all like to be well informed to avoid being 'shallow'. Managers praise the depth of their teams, and, well, no one wants to take a dive into a paddling pool. The same is true in fantasy - the deeper the pool of talent, the more options we have, and the more opportunities there are to differentiate our teams. With the international break giving us time to catch our collective breath, I thought it might be useful to look at the current pool of talent, and assess how it looks after 7 weeks. The below are the players who I feel should register on our radars. I'm not saying they all represent great investments right now, just that, as things stand, they could hold some value in the short-medium term. A couple of points to clarify before we start. Anyone suffering from a long term injury (even if close to returning) is excluded. You can't be caught picking up injured players too early and so the likes of Glen Johnson or Steve Gerr

In years past, Chelsea playing away at Old Trafford would have caused countless issues for fantasy managers, who would have been forced to contemplate how to use their Chelsea assets. No more. Aside from the emerging Mata, Chelsea have become a fantasy afterthought and instead it's Man City and Liverpool's tricky trips causing us issues this week. The best fixtures for the week appear to belong to some of the mid-level teams, with Bolton and Everton looking like the pick of the bunch. Without further ado then, here are this week's clean sheet and attacking rankings: Clean Sheet Rankings Forecast goals conceded and clean sheets kept - opponents failed to score in parenthesis Aston Villa vs Newcastle (0.86 8-8) Everton vs Wigan (1.05 6-9) Man Utd vs Chelsea (1.10 11-8) Sunderland vs Stoke (1.12 7-10) Swansea vs West Brom (1.14 n/a - 9) Tottenham vs Liverpool (1.17 5-6) Wolves vs QPR (1.22 4 - n/a) Man City @ Fulham (1.31 6-4) Stoke @ Sunderland (1.36 4

Arsenal Szczesny, Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs, Ramsey, Frimpong, Arteta, Arshavin, Walcott, van Persie. Subs: Fabianski, Park, Andre Santos, Djourou, Chamakh, Benayoun, Coquelin. This lineup is what most predicted, though I am little surprised that Benayoun didn't get a chance ahead of Arshavin or Walcott, who have both flattered to deceive so far this year. Arshavin grabbed a fortuitous goal was pretty quiet throughout while Walcott had another game of promising positions turning into wasted chances. Benayoun got half an hour but was often pushed back with defensive duties, though he did play a couple of nice through balls to spring Arsenal counter attacks. I almost brought Ramsey in this week on the basis that this team will surely start scoring goals soon, but Arsenal just don't look too dynamic at the moment and even with great fixtures can't be relied upon for big goal hauls. Defensively, the team obviously looked better than last week though Swansea sti

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 a bit simplis

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

The old bonus points was a constant source of contention for fantasy owners and while we tolerated the system, I'm not sure anyone ever really understood it. Well, credit to the developers over at pl.com who have added a layer of accountability with the inclusion of EA Sports Index as the new method of awarding points. The system aims to measure a player's all round contribution to the success of his team using six key indices: Winning performance - shares league points won by a team between the players according to the minutes they played. This will obviously favour winning teams, and to a lesser extent home teams who generally enjoy a higher winning percentage. Player's match performance - earn points for positive events (shots, tackles, saves etc) and lose them for negative events (missed shot, yellow card etc). Doesn't really favour anyone as any talented player can have a good game. Slight edge to keepers from weaker sides who may rack up more saves and clea