Here’s our FPL team review article where we analyse a number of teams and see if the data shows anything significant in terms of what factors are crucial in determining your final overall rank
FPL team review – analysing a number of managers teams in more detail
To do this we analysed 9 teams mainly from the FFGeek contributors and the top 10 FPL managers I followed. We used the great FPL team analysis tool anewpla.net to analyse teams. We picked 5 teams that had final overall ranks of 3k, 7k, 17k,17k and 8k. We also picked 4 teams mainly from the top 10 FPL managers I followed (who I am sure would have been disappointed with their final ranks) of 253k, 354k 216k and 162k. There we looked to see if there were any common factors which determined a the higher or the lower rank. As ever it’s not a statistically robust analysis but I hoped it would give us some insights.
By the way I split the groups into 2 calling 1 the higher ranked group and the other the lower ranked grouped. I don’t think anyone of the managers reads this in the lower group but I don’t want to offend anyone .
Also I’m trying to see if any individual factors are significant rather than trying to find a multiple factor formula which would require a mathematician with more skills than me.
How did the managers start?
So one thing that is evident is your GW1 rank isn’t relevant to your end rank. Even GW10 was recoverable.
However the managers with the lower ranks didn’t recover from their GW20 score. While the free hit chip gave some good rank movement the double gameweeks less so especially if you didn’t wildcard in GW32. The GW30 to GW38 did see universal improvement apart from 1 manager.
Captain points and points on the bench?
Is the higher the benched points the better the overall strength of your team or an indication of your inability to start the correct player? Whatever the case it doesn’t appear to be a determining factor in end rank.
Captain points also in itself isn’t a determining factor. The 1st and 3rd highest captain scores were from the managers group with the lower ranks. What surprised me was my captain score was so high. I’m normally a pretty conservative poll following captain picker so interesting I did so well.
Hits and auto subs?
In my ebook for the start of the season the limited data did show that if you took a relatively high number of hits but had a relatively low immediate transfer point return per hit then your rank would suffer. This time that doesn’t appear to be the case. Keith for example took a massive amount of hits with a pretty ordinary return but still finished with the highest rank. Man 3 took relatively few hits and had an excellent points per immediate transfer but still had a relatively low rank. Although on average the lower ranked group had a points per immediate transfer of 4.1 vs 5.0 that to me isn’t significant and not consistent among both groups of managers.
Interestingly apart from myself and Manager 3 the higher ranked group took more hits than the lower ranked group.
Auto sub points and Points per sub showed no pattern I could see.
Points by position
I thought this may be helpful in isolating different positions as areas which could ultimately help in determining overall rank. Unfortunately formations can distort this. So for example someone playing 3-5-2 will get better PPG for forwards that someone playing 3-4-3 as that at least some 3 man forward lines will include a cheapie.
The higher ranked teams definitely averaged more than the lower ranked teams in every position and by PPG that’s no real surprise.
The higher ranked did consistently beat the lower rank in GK points in totals and PPG. They also consistently beat them in forwards PPG. Whether that is signficant is another matter.
Interestingly the double figure hauls were consistently and far lower in the lower ranked teams than the higher ranked teams. Again no surprise. Does it mean you shouldn’t ignore those explosive players?
Formations
So 3-4-3 still remained on average the most commonly used formation and the only think to take from the above is that the higher ranked managers played the 3-4-3 formation better than the lower ranked managers
Captains
So nothing particularly stands out here. On average the higher ranked managers used most captains better but that was not consistent with every manager. Probably the closest to say is that the higher ranked managers used Kane better in general.
Goals v Assists v Clean Sheets
So what does standout here is that the higher ranked managers teams all scored significantly more goals than the lower ranked. 127 on average vs 111. The lower ranked managers got more assists and on clean sheets there wasn’t a huge difference.
Is that significant? Does that tie in with the higher ranked managers getting more points and PPG generally with forwards?
Summary
I’ve maintained that FPL is a game of fine margins and 50/50 calls and your rank is ultimately determined by that.
There was no silver bullet which gave the key to the higher ranked managers vs those with a lower ranks. While on average they probably did better in everything individually it wasn’t consistent when you compared the 2 sets of managers.
I thought beforehand that captain picks or how good your immediate return on transfers might be the answer. It wasn’t
It also didn’t seem that your GW1 score or even your GW10 score was a determinant.
At best the information suggested that the higher ranked managers got more out of their forwards and GKs and their teams scored more goals and got more double digit hauls.
Maybe that points to looking for goal scorers in all areas of your team and emphasising the importance of forwards?
Unfortunately this amount of data certainly didn’t give anything conclusive.
Hope you found it interesting none the less.
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