Here’s a few thoughts on where we are at the halfway stage of the fantasy premier league 2015/16 season. Some speculation on why we are where we are, especially if you are suffering like myself and the top 10 FPL managers I follow. Also some thoughts on going forward
fantasy premier league tips – a few thoughts at the halfway stage
Firstly while I would have liked to pile on a load of statstistics and graphs to back up my points thats not feasible due to time unfortunately so alot of the stuff will be anecdotal. It’s worth saying that this is not meant to be a moan or a “woe is me” type exercise it’s merely to make sense and hopefully learn for going forward.
The changing face of the premier league
Leicester were bottom of the premier league last Christmas. This year they were top. That says it all. At the moment Leicester are 2nd, Palace 5th, West Ham 6th, Watford 7th and Stoke 8th. Last seasons Champions Chelsea are 14th. Liverpool and Everton 10th and 11th. Man Utd have been an attacking disaster. 9th equal in goals scored.
The chang premier league meant the pool of players became alot wider from alot of varying circumstances. Packing the players with top 4 challenging teams rotating for fixtures didn’t work. This meant alot of previously successful FPL managers found themselves behind early. Unfortunately in FPL it’s alot easier to hold your position by covering ownership than it is to chase which needs some patience and at least some risk.
History means nothing
At the beginning of the year I did an article called the proven and reliable. It showed players who had been in the premier league for the last 3 years and produced consistently good returns.
Those players were with this season summed up:
Aguero: mainly injured (returned a goal or assist in 4/11 games 36% consistency)
Hazard: Poor form (returned a goal or assist in 4/18 games 22% consistency)
Silva: mainly injured (returned a goal or assist in 5/10 games 50% consistency)
Walcott: Injury and gametime issues (returned a goal or assist in 5/13 games 38% consistency)
Sigurdsson: Hasn’t adjusted to the loss of Bony. Fell out with Monk (returned a goal or assist in 3/19 games 16% consistency)
Add to that Sanchez’s issues and you have yourself shorn of alot of your safe performers. Without safe performers the captain choices narrow not to mention the pain you endure in the run up to realising they are no longer safe. Without safe captain choices your rank can fall quickly. The problem is exacerbated if others are captaining the current form players such as Mahrez.
Looking at the reverse of history:
The top 5 point attacking scorers in FPL to date are compared to their last season stats:
Mahrez 149 points 13 goals 7 assists FPL point every 9.2 mins. Last whole season 4 goals and 5 assists FPL point every 20.4 mins
Lukaku 130 points 15 goals 4 assists FPL point every 12.9 mins. Last whole season 10 goals and 6 assists FPL point every 21.3 mins
Ozil 129 points 3 goals 16 assists FPL point every 12.0 mins. Last whole season 4 goals and 6 assists FPL point every 18.0 mins
Ighalo In the Championship
Vardy 124 points 15 goals 4 assists FPL point every 12.6 mins. Last whole season 5 goals and 12 assists FPL point every 18.7 mins
Mahrez, Lukaku and Vardy have all scored more goals at the halfway stage than the full season and Ozil has nearly 3 times the assists than the full last season already.
The top 10 attacking point scoring players are the above plus Barkley Kane, Arnautovic, Wijnaldum, and De Bruyne . Thats Ozil Kane De Bruyne and possibly Lukaku and Barkley that could be called top 4 challenging teams. Leicester, Watford and Newcastle were more likely to be relegation candidates
Fixtures or Form?
I haven’t done the stats to prove this but it does seem to me that fixtures haven’t played the part of previous seasons. I haven’t seen various people who have shown stats that seem to have a fairly even amount of returns from all fixtures. To me that seems counter intuitive and certainly goes against betting odds. However I think the picking players who haven’t been consistent or in good form but have good fixtures seemingly hasn’t had the returns expected. Probably the most extreme case I can recall is people recently bringing Hazard in on a run of good fixtures which certainly didn’t bring the returns expected. I think the results around GW8-10 which saw Newcastle best Norwich 6-2, Man City best Newcastle and Bournemouth 5-1 and Spurs beat Bournemouth 5-1 saw a scramble for players facing those teams at the sacrifice of consistency exacerbated by all 3 teams really tightening up defensively after that.
So what is the answer?
Obviously if I could tell you the answer with certainty I would probably be investing my time in the bookies rather than this. However I think I covered alot in my article “a few musings on rank volatility, ownership and team structure” so it’s worth reading that. In essence I don’t believe if you’re chasing that you need to panic. Be aware of ownership to avoid massive drops. Have one or 2 differentials but don’t go mad. Defence matters. This plus the captain choice can get you back on track. Thats the general theme of my view on the way to recover. Only time will tell how successful it is and captain choice will play a massive part. My basis for selecting players (apart from ownership) is a blend of point returns per minute , consistency (% of games where an assist or goal has been scored), fixtures and underlying stats. The selection comes in my “ones to watch” articles. Obviously if that all those boxes had to be ticked then the team would be pretty sparse. Plus it’s also worth looking at changes in circumstances such as changes in position such as Ramsey recently. So it’s a matter of making calls on the defeciencies.
I hope you found that interesting and useful in some way
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