PLFantasy

Given the short gameweek, I only have one main topic this week: Man City (and then a couple of words on Harry Kane). Whether you just saw the goals, highlights or whole game, there was no denying how impressive City's demolishing of Stoke was this week. All six of their starting midfielders and forwards amassed at least 31 points under the official BPS system, compared to just two players total from United, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsneal (Bakayoko and Eriksen). Jesus was given the most points under that system (which overvalues goals in my opinion), De Bruyne was awarded Man of the Match at the stadium while Sterling earned the most fantasy points thanks to his goal, two assists and bonus points. In short, there's a lot of talent to go around here. Two things jumped out this week about this City side that need a bit of exploring: 1. It's increasingly difficult to select just three City players given the talent on offer. Silva, Sterling and Mane are all perf...

As we sit in the middle of another dull international week, many managers will be tempted to play (or have already played) that wildcard chip. With that in mind, I wanted to link to a few resources that I have posted over the past few weeks that might be useful Overall player projection  - projected points for the next 12 gameweeks Player share of key stats - the percentage of their team's SiB and CC that each player has accounted for Points vs Expected Points - a quick way to highlight players who have underperformed their underlying stats to date and could see increased fortunes in the future with improved conversion rates. Performance vs prior season - see how players have performed in this season's fixtures compared to the same fixture last season Team snapshot and projection - which teams are performing best and who do you need to secure coverage for? Defender selector - which defender gives the best combination of value and attacking threat within each ...

Readers of this blog will likely be comfortable with the idea that one way in which we tend to mis-evaluate a player's performance to date is to focus too much on outcomes and not enough on process i.e. on goals and not shots. This problem, of course, is what stats like expected goals (xG) try to combat, as does simply looking at underlying stats rather than focusing on goals or assists. Another area for caution is to adjust for the opponents an individual player has faced. A player may well be good value for their 3 goals in 3 games based on their underlying stats, but if those all came in games against Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Swansea then it doesn't necessarily mean they will enjoy future success when the opponents get tougher. This is implicitly factored into the player projections , which are based on individual opponents but there are holes in the model that can need to be recognized. For example, the model allocates a team's projected shots to individual p...

One of the key complications with player forecasting - or indeed I imagine any forecasting - is deciding which data set to use. When it comes to fantasy football, we obviously want to include as much recent data as possible but the issue is when we can exclusively rely on this season's data and when we need to look to the past seasons for guidance. I am generally quite happy to solely rely on this season's raw event data such as shots or created chances fairly early on as they tend to occur with relative frequency and thus stabilise in a short time frame. How these events get converted into goals can fluctuate a lot more though, as the key driver there - goals - happen much less frequently. With this mind, the revised player projection table below allows you to choose how you are converting the raw chances into goals and assists: Past season - uses the benefit of having a 38 game sample to see how different teams convert chances into goals. The negative, of course, is that te...

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 ...

As we all know, getting too bogged down in data analysis at this stage of this season can be dangerous, as the sample sizes on hand lead to one anomaly having a material impact on our conclusions (whether or not that changes after just 8-10 weeks is an argument for another day, but we can agree that three of four games isn't enough to make too many concrete claims). One factor, however, that is equally essentially to fantasy success that can be discussed now is playing time. Regular playing time at this stage of the season doesn't guarantee a future spot in the side, but it is indicative that a given player sits atop the depth chart at his position and is at least in a position of privilege for the coming weeks. One of the charts I included in the recently released e-book showed the defenders for every team for each week of the season, assigning them a status based on whether they were rotated by choice or unavailable for selection. The idea being, that we can deal with i...

In the first of a new regular series, we're going to look at the week's top fantasy performers (purely measured by fantasy points) and look at the evidence as to whether their success is sustainable or whether the inevitable hype needs to be ignored. Where possible I will draw on the available stats but I'll also add more subjective comments regarding a player's future playing time or other possible risks. Without wishing to be negative, more often than not we're going to be dousing fires here as you don't need me to tell you after yet another Carlos Tevez goal that he's a good player. I'm also going to stay away from defenders who purely earned their points from defensive means as the sustainability of those is a whole other ball game that needs more than just a line or two per player. Each player has been assigned a 'Buy', "Hold' or 'Sell' status. These don't necessarily reflect what I would  do, more what I believe to b...

Arsenal Mannone, Jenkinson, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Gibbs, Diaby, Arteta, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cazorla, Podolski, Giroud Subs: Martinez, Koscielny, Andre Santos, Walcott, Ramsey, Coquelin, Gervinho. A really good display here from Arsenal with some impressive performances throughout the side. The Gunners earned their 3rd straight clean sheet and were generally good value for it with Mannone not really making any saves of note. The back four have settled down very nicely and were kept together despite the return of Koscielny from injury. Over the course of the season I'm not sure if Mertesacker will hold him off but for now it doesn't make sense for Wenger to change much. Jenkinson remains particularly good value until Sagna returns (currently on schedule for the end of the month) and by then the centre back position should be cleared up so a transition can be made to either Mertesacker, Koscielny or Gibbs if this side remain a solid defensive option. Offensively I am very...