GW20 and beyond!

"Behold! My newly improved FPL Incorporated SeasonTickerSpreadSheet-inator!"

GW20 and beyond!

It's a New Year, the January Transfer Window is open, and second wildcards are available to those of us feeling bored, desperate or lacking in the ability to delay gratification!  

As promised in yesterday's blog, here is the first in what I hope will become a regular offering based on predictions spawned by my spreadsheet.  Please read yesterday's 'New Year's season ticker Resolution' blog for further insights into the 'philosophy' underpinning it all.

First off, the screenshot below provides an overview of the forthcoming run of 6 fixtures, from which I will base all my recommendations for captaincy, clean sheets and transfers:

Key:  Dark blue is best and dark red the worst. The top table relate to expected number of goals scored, and the bottom one to expected goals conceded.

O Captain! My Captain!

Whereas most managers seem to base their decision on who to captain purely on which players are in form, my approach is to ask which teams are most likely to score goals in the gameweek, and then choose a likely player from those teams.  As for GW20, my spreadsheet identifies the 8 most likely teams as those shown below:

Good news then for popular captain pick Ozil this gameweek.  Not so good for the subscribers to the "always captain Mahrez" school of thought.

Keeping Clean Sheets

My spreadsheet identifies the 7 teams below as least likely to concede goals in GW20:

WAT are probably the most surprising name to feature prominently in this table, but you have to remember that MCI only have one YYT out-of-the-blue wonder goal vs ARS to show for their last 5 away games, including a scoreless draw versus AVL.

Transfer Business

The screenshots in this section will be intended to assist managers in deciding which teams to prioritise for their transfers and wildcards.  There will usually be two ranking tables here, one for the current state of play, and one for projected changes based on results in the coming gameweek being in line with expectation.

As alluded to in yesterday's blog, STO are a team very much on the up in terms of attacking potential over the next set of fixtures, which will be music to the ears of the Arnautovic bandwagoners, as well as Bojan and Shaqiri owners.  Their stock would probably be higher than it already is, but for being reduced to 9 men in the first half against SUN 3 away games back.

Having declared in that last blog that Vardy and Ighalo holders would be satisfied by the position of their respective teams in the expected goals table for the next 6 fixtures, the projected table for next week paints a different picture, as LEI and WAT are set to fall from their current 2nd and 4th rankings to 7th and 8th.  ARS, BOU and WBA are expected to consolidate their positions, MCI are predicted to return into the mix, and NEW likely to drop off our radar.

In terms of shoring up our defences, the teams most likely to keep clean sheets over the next 6-7 gameweeks are deemed to be those shown below:

From these tables we can see that CPL, SWA, LIV and TOT DEF assets look most worthy of our attention, and Micah Richards should be avoided like the plague!

These numbers represent the number of times out of 6 that teams are predicted to have a better than 50% chance of not conceding any goals.  To put this into some kind of perspective, it's useful to remember that two 70% chances will only both succeed less than half the time (49%).

Finally, the number of goals expected from each team generates a predicted scoreline for all matches in any given gameweek.  In the case of GW20 these are as follows:

I should stress that only an inveterate gambler would bet on correct scores as there are just far too many unpredictable events and unknowable variables in every football match.  Be warned you will almost certainly lose money if you back these predictions.  Think of the table above as indicative of the likely average should the games be played a hundred times each, and even then, only if recent form is anything to go by.

As ever, please feel free to comment or ask questions, either below or via my twitter account @barCOLEYna.

Coley.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!