I thought I would take a look at the Barclays fantasy premier league bonus allocation in Saturdays GW1 games to see what the effect of the new system was. After all the fanfare I was expecting an extremely complicated algorithm analysing loads of data ending up with the output being that Lucas Leiva got the bonus points system based on his final third passing completion rate and interceptions etc etc.. However it turned out to be rather simpler
First I should play to the mathematicians reading this. I do realise that 7 games is not a robust data set but I was extremely curious and the results were interesting anyway
ok so firstly I looked at the bonus points allocated yesterday. I decided for simplicity that a bonus was a bonus irrespective of 3 point or 1 point as I was trying to decide who got the bonuses rather than who got which bonus.
The very simple maths
There were 24 bonus points given out yesterday. Here’s where they were allocated:
1. Goal scorer – 11 times
2. Assister – 5 times
3. Clean sheet defender – 8 times
4. Penalty saved – 2 times
5. Other – 1 time (to Clark of Villa)
If you’re wondering why that doesn’t add up to 24 its because Mignolet, Coleman and Shaw all did 1 of the categories twice. Not surprisingly they got the 3 point bonuses.
To say I was surprised that out of 24 bonus points 23 fitted in to these easy 4 categories was an understatement.
Now lets look at it in reverse
If you scored or assisted or were a defender that got a clean sheet or saved a penalty what were the chances of you then getting a bonus point of some sort:
1. 11/15 (73%) goal scorers got some sort of bonus.
2. However on 6/13 (46%) of assisters got some sort of bonus.
3. There were 4 clean sheets yesterday, in all 4 cases (100% obviously) 2 defenders or GKs got a bonus point. There was also a pretty good mixture between CBs and FBs. Interestingly they were all winning clean sheets not 0-0’s which hasn’t happened yet. I had a look at the defensive stats quickly but couldn’t see any discernible pattern as to why those players got the bonus and not the others.
4. In both cases of penalty saves the GKs got bonus points.
So what does this all mean
Goal scorers will continue to be rewarded. Assisters are far less likely to get the bonus points. Goal scoring midfielders such as Walcott Michu and Lampard will continue to be rewarded. Assist based midfielders like Jarvis Downing and Lennon will be disadvantaged
Clean sheets are good for defenders making them worth investing in. Bargains in teams like City Chelsea Arsenal and Liverpool who all got 14 clean sheets plus will be rewarded well.
That’s it I’ll try and round it up for the rest of GW1 (to increase the data set to 11!) but hopefully it will give you a feel if you’re thinking of an early transfer
I’ll be rounding up yesterdays action in a few hours:
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Here’s the link to my GW1 fixture ease schedule:
http://www.fantasyfootballgeek.co.uk/fantasy-premier-league-fixture-ease-schedule-gw1/