Tuesday 14 May 2013

What It Takes to Win Fantasy Premier League

If you're not a subscriber to InsideFPL's free weekly newsletterhint, go subscribe ;) - than you will have missed this article I did in the week following Gameweek 33. But here it is and I will post another article in a similar vein from the newsletter later this week. I found this very educational personally and I am definitely going to bear this kind of info. in mind when I pick my team for next season.


champs
What does it take to be the very best in Fantasy Premier League? How many points do you need to be scoring from your captain each week, from your defence, midfield and attack?  How much money should you spend in each area? To try and answer this question we’ve taken a close look at the gameweek history this season (up to GW33) of the No.1 ranked FPL manager. It's too late to help you this season so be sure to follow us next year when we will recap this inforamtion as part of our build up to the new season.

3-4-3  Formation
Invariably the de facto FPL formation the 3-4-3 was played by our top manger 26 times out of the possible 33, 3-5-2 being the next most selected.

65 Average GW Score
A supreme weekly average of 65 pts/week, well clear of the game’s overall average of 45 pts/week. This essentially means a return of 6 points from each player every week. For the stattos out there the median gameweek score for our No.1 was 59. importantly, the No.1 only scored lower than 40 points once this season demonstrating the consistency that is needed in FPL that you get from decent squad depth and forward planning.

-4 Transfer Cost
No.1 took just one 4 pt hit all season. Again this shows great planning and squad depth as well as some fortune with injuries to key players. It also showcases great personal discipline and patience. Bravo. The single -4 pt hit came before a DGW too.

31Transfers Made:  17 single transfers, 7 doubles
Most players make a single transfer each week. The No.1 banked his weekly transfer around 25% of the time in favour of a double swap in a later week.  This again shows good planning and also the advantage you can get from a double transfer and being flexible with where your money is spent (think liquid assets).

266 Captain Points 
The No.1’s captain picks were good, but not game-winningly so. He scored an additional 266 points from captain picks which averages out at 8pts/GW.  To put this into context, captaining Van Persie every week would see you gain an additional 219 points, and indeed our manager selected RVP as his captain on 17 out of the 33 weeks and therefore picked up an extra 50 or so points sharing the armband around, Bale, Mata and Hazard being the next most selected.

15 Goalkeeper & Defence: 16 pts/week (4pts/player)
Between the goalie and three defenders No.1 has scored an average 15pts per gameweek.  Given that these 4 will nominally get 8 pts from appearances each week this is equivalent roughly to 3 clean sheets every 2 weeks plus a save point or two.

24 Midfield: 24 pts/week (6 pts/player)
Excluding captain points and assuming again a 3-4-3 formation to win FPL you’ll need to score 24 pts on average from your midfield. Minus 8 appearance points leaves 16 points to be accrued, equivalent to 3 goals, or more likely 2 goals plus bonus points and any extra assist or clean sheet point or two,

18  Forwards: 18 pts/week (6 pts/player)
The No.1’s front line has been racking up goals on average of 2-3 a week, depending on bonus points and assists.

£££  Distribution of Budget
The average value of for goalkeepers played was £4.7m, defenders £5.3m, midfield £7.5m and forwards £9.1m.  It terms of overall spread of team value it’s GK+DEF: 27%, MIDS 38%, FWD 35%



5 comments:

  1. Great post mate!

    ReplyDelete
  2. nice post :) I've played kinda similar to this, so that might be why Ive done so well (currently 25th). I've taken more point hits, mostly in part due to injuries and suspensions, with a bit of luck I couldve been top 10. Looking forward to see if I can keep it up next season!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cheers M9G - when you say you've played similarly, what do you mean more precisely? Seen how well you've been doing on the forum. Incredible, and good luck in GW38 /bows

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes I got the mug thanks! I think I posted in the forum at the time to say I got it, maybe I forgot though sorry.

    More precisely I would say I've always gone with 3-4-3, there was a time when a lot of people switched to 3-5-2 but other than maybe once or twice due to injuries/suspensions I've always played a 3-4-3.

    Also the spread of money throughout the team, more money spent on strikers than anywhere else. For over 20 weeks I had a frontline of RVP/Suarez/Ba. I preferred to have two lower priced mids that rotated like Punch/Sterling/Taarabt/Maloney etc. Everyone has a different opinion, for me strikers get more goals which in turn equals more bonus, I'd rather spend my money there than on big hitting defenders and hoping for clean sheets which are very rare these days.

    A few weeks ago the average for clean sheets was 2 per week, thats a 1 in 10 chance of getting a clean sheet. I will adopt the same approach next year and just go for cheap defenders again

    ReplyDelete