You may recall in the strategy category the analysing of the opening 6 games
As I said I have used 6 as a rough rule of thumb of how far I think fantasy premier league managers should look forward. In 6 games you would have had nearly a 50% chance of transferring the player out of your team. looking and ranking on a longer time frame means you wouldn’t necessarily transfer in a player as the you could miss some juicy fixtures that may be coming up in say 2 or 3 games
I have ranked the fixtures based on defensive facts from last year including:
(i) underlying shot stats
(ii) goals conceded
(iii) clean sheets
(iv) form from late season fixtures.
I have then scored the fixtures and ranked them accordingly.
I am now going to introduce a new concept which I call fixture “trending”. What it means is looking at 6 fixtures from GW2 onwards for 6 games and then GW3 onwards for 6 games etc This allows you to look over a longer time frame while also spotting teams with easy fixtures in the short term. It can give some volatile results though. For example if your GW! fixture ease ranking is no 1 and in your opening fixture you have a home game against say a newly promoted team such as West Ham that will greatly assist your ranking. If you then analyse 6 fixtures from GW2 and the new 6th fixture is away at Manchester City then for your Gw2 6 game analysis youve lost a very easy game at Home to west ham and added a difficult away game to Manchester City. That could drop your GW2 fixture ease ranking to as low as 6th. It doesnt mean that the fixtures from GW2-6 have gone its changed significantly due to 2 very diferent fixtures. I hope that makes sense but to Illustrate ill use A Villa who have a GW1 fixture ease ramking of 3
The gw1 to gw6 fixtures are
WHM away
EVTN home
NEW away
SWA home
SOUTH away
WBA home
pretty good fixtures, 2 of the newly promted sides and apart from everton none of the sides have a defensive ranking above 9th by my reckoning. The Villa GW1 fixture ranking is 3rd
Now looking from GW2 the following 6 fixtures apply
WHM away
EVTN home
NEW away
SWA home
SOUTH away
WBA home
TOT A
So you lose a juicy game against newly promoted West ham and add in a difficult away game against the team with the 3rd best defence in my view. The GW2 fixture ease ranking drops 3 places them to 6. they only have 1 game against a newly promoted side and have 2 games against the 3rd and 4th best defences.
anyway heres the list
GW1 fixture ease ranking with the GW2 GW3 and GW4 6 game ranking next to them
1 Swansea 1 1 7
2. West Ham 5 2 2
3. Aston Villa 6 11 3
4. Tottenham 2 6 6
5. Chelsea 7 13 19
6. Sunderland 8 14 14
7. Everton 3 4 4
8. WBA 4 5 9
9. Newcastle 12 8 10
10 Man U 9 7 18
11. Fulham 11 3 1
12. Wigan 10 10 11
13 Norwich 14 19 15
14 Man City 15 9 12
15 Reading 18 18 16
16 QPR 16 17 17
17 Arsenal 17 16 5
18 Stoke 20 20 20
19 Liverpool 19 12 8
20 Southampton 13 15 13
So what does this show. The teams that consistently have good short term fixtures for each game week and long term fixtures from GW1 are
Swansea
West ham
Tottenham
Everton
The biggest fantasy premier league improvers are Fulham and the droppers Chelsea and Sunderland
I hope this gives an added dimension for people in assessing fantasy premier league players.
lets also look again at the captain selection for each round
Chelsea v Wigan H plus Reading away
Man City v Southampton
Round 2
Man Utd v Fulham
Tottenham v WBA
Round 3
Tottenham v Norwich
Man City v QPR
Round 4
Man Utd v Wigan
Arsenal v Southampton
Round 5
Tottenham v QPR
Chelsea v Stoke
Round 6
Everton V Southampton
Round 7
Man City v Sunderland
Chelsea v Norwich
Spurs v Villa
Round 8
Liverpool V Reading
Man U v Stoke
Round 9
Ars V QPR
City v Swansea
lets reissue the fantasy premier league schedule and show the captain opportunities in the first 9 games
1 Swansea
2. West Ham
3. Aston Villa
4. Tottenham (4)
5. Chelsea (3)
6. Sunderland
7. Everton (1)
8. WBA
9. Newcastle
10 Manchester United (3)
11. Fulham
12. Wigan
13 Norwich
14 Manchester City (4)
15 Reading
16 QPR
17 Arsenal (2)
18 Stoke
19 Liverpool (1)
20 Southampton
this shows that irrespective of fixtures you should have
UTD
City
and Spurs
players that you have faith in giving the Captains armband to
I hope this gives some extra thought to your planning
