FPL substitutes – how the top 6 teams attacking players performed off the bench

Fantasy Premier League, Gameweek analysis

Here’s our look at the success of FPL substitutes.  Rotation among the teams who qualified for the European competitions and the risk of a 1 point substitution appearance is a common frustration for FPL managers.  Here we look at the attacking players from the top 6 teams and look at how they performed from the bench

FPL substitutes – how the top 6 teams attacking players performed off the bench




Methodology

I’ve look at attacking players from the teams involved in European competitions as they are the most at risk of rotation.  I’ve then looked at the points gained from the bench, the minutes played and how consistently they’ve returned from the bench.

I haven’t attempted to factor in the times they’ve not played at all due to rotation.  Obviously in those instances you get sub points or vice captain points but it would have been too onerous a task to try and separate injury no shows from rotation now shows.

Here’s the schedules.  They should be fairly self explanatory.

Just a word of clarification for certainity.  By substitute and off the bench I mean in real football games.  Not off my FPL team bench!

The forwards schedule

This is a summary.  The detailed breakdown of each player is in this google spreadsheet



FPL substitutes

The midfielders

This is a summary.  The detailed breakdown of each player is in this google spreadsheet

FPL substitutes

So what does this tell us?

It tells us firstly that you can’t be expecting much in the way of returns if your player is named on the subs bench.  Only Aubameyang and Lacazette and too a lesser extent Hazard performed to anything like their normal PPMs off the bench.  That’s understandable but the drop is a lot more than I would have thought.  If you exclude the 2 Arsenal lads who distorted the figure the rest are pretty much a 20% chance of a return of the subs bench whereas you’d be hoping for a 50% chance of a return if they start.  Not only that but the level of returns are also lower than I would have expected.  You’ll be lucky to get 2 points in alot of cases whereas from a starting position you’d be hoping for an average near 5.

I don’t think this means you stop getting attacking players from top 6 teams, that would be madness but the rotation is definitely a factor to not ignore.

On the positive side the Manchester City and Liverpool key players of Sterling, Aguero, Salah and Mane weren’t coming off the bench very much.  A total of 7 times between the 4 of them is a pretty low number.  Yes I haven’t factored the times that they just were rested and didn’t start but still it’s still a positive.

Kane is another example and only came off the bench once.  Hazard also only 3 times after his initial post world cup rest in the first 2 matches.

The bigger point scorers were rotated less as a rule of thumb.  I guess you could theorise that they may focus the rest on the domestic cups and the easier European games rather than the premier league.

There were some really atrocious players off the bench.  Martial, Moura, David Silva and Lukaku the worst of them.

If you just looked at the schedule you’d say that the forwards fared better off the bench but if you stripped out Lacazette and Aubameyang then that’s not really the case significantly.

Why were Lacazette and Aubameyang so much more productive than everyone else.  That’s hard to say.  They averaged more minutes than anyone else apart from  Higuain who only came off the bench once.

Aubameyang got 27 points off 2 consecutive games against Leicester and Fulham and only got an assist in the remaining 4 games.  Laczaette though was just plain good off the bench full stop.

I hope you found that interesting

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