Here’s our FPL Bandwagons article where we look at whether an FPL 10 point plus haul is a trigger for player confidence and improved returns over and above their average.
FPL Bandwagons – should we transfer in attacking players when they score 10+ points?
I get the impression that there is a perception that should a player get a big return (whether this is a goal and assist or 2 goals etc) in a game then that will increase his confidence and trigger further above average returns. I would also say that, anecdotally, 10+ point hauls trigger a large number of transfers on this basis. Therefore I thought I’d spend a little time trying to work out if it’s true that a 10+ point haul does trigger above average returns to follow.
Methodology
The players I looked at were the 10 top points scoring midfielders and forwards.
I looked at each time they scored 10+ FPL points and then took an average of their next 6 games and compared it to their overall points per game average.
If the player scored another 10+ points in the run of 6 I wouldn’t start the count again or make it a new event. I would let the 6 game run complete before looking for another trigger 10 point haul to add the points up again.
Towards the end of the season or if they got dropped or injured I would only count the sequence following a 10+ point haul if there were a minimum of 3 games with only a 1 game no show interruption.
Now mathematicians amongst you won’t see this as anything like a definitive answer but to me it should give some insight.
There’s a couple of tables on my findings and then a what does this tell us section. So jump to that if you just want the answer
The tables
There are 2 tables. 1 for midfielders and another for forwards. If you’re going to try and make sense of the table then it’s worth reading the key.
Midfielders
Forwards
Key:
Post 10 point average: The grey section is the average of the 6 games (in nearly all cases) after a 10 point haul of the particular player.
Ovr average: the average of the individual post 10 point averages for the individual players
FPL PPM: the season points per match of the individual player from the fantasy premier league site
Beats FPL PPM: the amount of times that the post 10 point average beats the FPL PPM number
Ovr average beats PPM: Yes (Y) if the players overall average from the 6 games post the 10 point haul beats their FPL PPM. No if it doesn’t
So what does the above tell us?
Unsurprisingly then, that just picking a player without any regard to other factors after they get a 10 point FPL haul (subject to the limitations of the work done) isn’t going to get you particularly more points than if you just held that player for the entire season.
More specifically. There was a pretty wide variation of points averaged that followed a 10 point haul and only in around 50% of the time was that 6 game average higher than their overall season points per game. The variations of those averages were also quite high.
From an overall point of view the 20 players average from those 6 games was only higher than their FPL points per match in 50% of the time.
Surprisingly forwards did alot better on an overall basis than midfielders although at any given 6 game run you would still only have a 50% chance of doing better than their season points per match.
Hope you found it interesting
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