fantasy premier league fixtures – a first draft fixture ease schedule for attacking players

With the release of what is effectively the fantasy premier league fixtures today here’s my first draft at a fixture ease schedule where we look at the teams with the best fixtures from an attacking perspective for the first 3, 6 and 10 gameweeks

fantasy premier league fixtures – a first draft fixture ease schedule for attacking players

Here’s the link to what is effectively the fantasy premier league fixtures released by the Premier League today Thursday

Introduction

Last season I used the official fantasy premier league fixture difficulty ranking as the base for my fixture ease articles.  This schedule divided fixtures up into 4 categories without distinguishing between teams attacking and defensive capabilities.

So for example to give the same ranking for the Arsenal and Bournemouth attack and defence didn’t seem to work for me as they both had good attacks but poor defence.

So I’ve started working on my own fixture ease schedule based on my own calculations.  Here’s a bit of background on methodology

Methodology

The idea is to have 2 fixture ease schedules.  One will rank the teams by the ease of the opposition defences they face over the upcoming games.  That will be called the attackers fixture ease schedule.

The 2nd will rank the teams by the ease of the attacking teams they face.  This will be called the defenders fixture ease schedule.

At the moment I have only completed a first draft of the attacking schedule.

I have done this by looking at the goals conceded last season of the 20 teams home and away and applied a factor against the average goals conceded of the 20 teams home and away.  I have adjusted some of the factors if a team over or under performed their expected goals by a considerable margin but that was only in a low number of cases.  For the promoted teams I have tried to find a proxy team from 18/19 teams and used their data.  You can see my article on the promoted teams if you’re interested in more information on them.  Those factors attributed to the defence faced are then added together over various spells of games to determine a ranking.

At the moment there are no “perception” adjustments.  So for example Arsenal were terrible away last season defensively (ranked 15th in goals conceded away) and Man Utd were also pretty ordinary in goals conceded home and away ( ranked 10th home and away in goals conceded).  I have not given them a discretionary positive “bump” for being a top 6 team.  If Man Utd sign say Maguire and Wan Bissaka over the summer then that will justify an adjustment as will any team who improves their defence by transfers.

I have a fixture graphic below which I’ve colour coded the defences home and away.  It is just to improve the visual aspect of the schedule and the factors I’ve talked about above, rather than the just the colours, are basis for calculation.

It is a work in progress so feedback is appreciated.  I also did it long hand so if there’s any mistakes or inconsistencies then that will also be useful information

The summary schedule for ease of defences faced by attacking players

Here’s a schedule where the teams are ranked by the ease of the defences they face over the first 6 gameweeks. I’ve also added the ranks for the first 3 gameweeks, and 10 gameweeks just so you can compare

The 6 gameweek fixture ease graphic

Here’s how the colour coded schedule looks over 6 game weeks in order of the ease of defences faced.  I maybe able to make it interactive but at the moment it’s just a graphic.  Just for the avoidance of doubt NOR (H) in the first line means Liverpool home to Norwich.  So Liverpool face the Norwich away defence.

The attacking fixture ease schedule will come soon

I’ll be working on a schedule which ranks the teams according to the ease of the attacking teams they face and post that as well.

AFCON and Copa America

I’ll cover these as part of the pre -season but it’s worth remembering that The Africa Cup of Nations finishes on the 19th July and the Copa America the 7th of July.  With the Premier League starting on the 10th August those players at the competitions will need to be monitored.

I’ll do more on that later.

Hope you found it useful.

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