PLFantasy

However good a player projection system is, it will always have certain assumptions built in which require some judgement on behalf of the model's creator. This might include how much weight to put on recent games versus historic data or how much to regress team or player conversion rates back to a league or historic average. One such assumption I do not currently factor into my own model is which kind of games a particularly player performs well in. For example, if Harry Kane accounts for 30% of his teams shots inside the box and Spurs are forecast for 10 SiB then his forecast will be three SiB regardless of who the opponents are. The strength of those opponents is of course somewhat baked into how we get to the 10 SiB projection in the first place, but no attention is paid to whether Kane has tended to over or under perform expectations against weaker or stronger teams, or whether he's struggled against teams who deploy three centre backs. The data below takes the first ste...

If you are reading this then you almost certainly own Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian winger has been sensational for Liverpool this season and fantasy managers have responded by adding him to their teams by the thousand. At the time of writing is ownership is up to 51% and his value has increased by almost a million pounds since the game started. Today's piece is not about him though, but his colleague who hopes to operate on the other side of the field - Sadio Mane. A red card, injury and the form of Salah have pushed Mane out of many managers minds, but as teams begin to converge and differentiation becomes increasingly difficult, the Senegal star is a promising option. First, a quick word on Liverpool. I think many people might be hesitant to invest close to 20 million on two Liverpool players (assuming you already have Salah) but I might suggest that fear is misplaced. They've scored just two goals less than Man United, four more than Arsenal, five more than Chelsea and ten ...

As alluded to in last week's post about Guardiola's "wild" rotation (or lack thereof), I am currently of the opinion that the various City options that are available (plus a couple of other elite players around the league) are so  good that it is worth absorbing the inevitable rotation hits that come, even as those punches start to increase in number over the busy holiday period. One of the risks and possible downsides here is that with rotation generally not being something one can plan around (unlike, say, actual injuries or suspensions), the characteristics of your bench need to be tweaked somewhat. Two key points need to be changed in my own personal bench strategy. First, I need to pay more attention to it. I am generally pretty focused on maintaining a good substitute keeper that rotates nicely with the other option and then one other sub, but after that I do not prioritise having a deep bench. Second, because you won't necessarily be able to choose when ...

There seems to be a growing chorus that Man City players are becoming harder and harder to own due to constant rotation from Pep Guardiola. There are two key pieces of information that are useful to assess how damaging rotation can be to a player: The predictability of when the rotation happens (before of after Champions League games, away from home etc), If not selected for the first team, how often do they come on as a sub. If you have a decent bench then - while frustrating - you can deal with players not playing at all. However, if they consistently come off the bench for only 15 minutes or so then you are lowering your odds at success. Predicting team sheets is not really my forte (nor a particular interest) so we're going to focus on the second point here: We can see four of the City options have spent time on the bench this season while De Bruyne and Silva have been ever present to date. The calculation for this pair is slightly different as you're getting i...

The popularity of "expected goals" as a metric has exploded over the past year or so, with mainstream TV broadcasts now starting to dip their toes in the water of advanced analytics. One inevitable, if slightly unfortunate, consequence is that there are now multiple xG models, which could potentially disagree by a reasonable amount, which to those who need a bit more persuasion as to the merits of statistical analysis, might suggest a lack of accuracy. This has somewhat been the case in baseball with the two big "Wins Above Replacement" (WAR) metrics sometimes disagreeing by a relatively large amount, especially when it comes to valuing pitchers. There is sound methodology behind each metric, of course, but for those who aren't well versed in the intricacies of the debate, the differences can be distracting and serve as fuel for those who want to dismiss analytics and focus on old fashioned "eyeball tests" etc. I, of course, have my own model which p...

I don't recall there ever being a side in the Premier League with so many viable fantasy options. The 2009-10 Chelsea side that scored 102 goals had Drogba, Lampard, Anelka and Malouda all with double digit goals but there's a non-zero chance that this City side could have four players approaching those totals by the holidays plus  two of the best two creative players in the league in Silva and De Bruyne. This week they have the top five xP players - which is simply absurd - and even Sane could be argued to be higher as he's currently still being penalised for his early season sub appearances (though with Aguero back I'd personally argue they remain a risk). The real heartbreaker is that this game against Burnley looks delicious and someone is going to be benched and disappoint a lot of managers. Everyone except Aguero played midweek against Napoli so there are no clues there, but this is in theory the third game in which Aguero was fit enough play after his bro...