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Fantasy Football Stats Challenge

  • 04-01-2012 6:13pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 139 ✭✭


    Not sure if anyone here has the time or the inclination to conduct some analysis on the average scores of players in fantasy football and which formations are, on average, more likely to yield a higher return.

    The rules provide:


    "To join the game select a fantasy football squad of 15 players, consisting of:
    • 2 Goalkeepers
    • 5 Defenders
    • 5 Midfielders
    • 3 Forwards
    Budget


    The total value of your initial squad must not exceed £100 million.

    Players per team

    You can select up to 3 players from a single Barclays Premier League team.


    Formation


    "Your team can play in any formation providing that 1 goalkeeper, at least 3 defenders and at least 1 forward are selected at all times".


    Therefore, the following is (I think) the list of all valid formations:


    GK-Def-Mid-Forward
    1 3 4 3 = 11
    1 3 5 2 = 11
    1 4 3 3 = 11
    1 4 4 2 = 11
    1 4 5 1 = 11
    1 5 2 3 = 11
    1 5 3 2 = 11
    1 5 4 1 = 11

    For the sake of illustration, the current points tallies for the top players in each position are as follows:

    Top 2 Goalkeepers
    Name
    Club
    Cost
    Points


    Vorm
    SWA
    5.2
    97

    Friedel
    TOT
    5.7
    84


    Top 5 Defenders
    Name
    Club
    Cost
    Points


    Kompany
    MCI
    6.6
    88

    Terry
    CHE
    7.5
    85

    Evra
    MUN
    7.1
    77

    Skrtel
    LIV
    6.1
    76

    Baines
    EVE
    7.7
    75


    Top 5 Midfielders:
    Name
    Club
    Cost
    Points


    Silva
    MCI
    10.4
    116

    Nani
    MUN
    10.5
    113

    Bale
    TOT
    9.3
    111

    Van der Vaart
    TOT
    9.8
    96

    Dempsey
    FUL
    8.5
    93


    Top 3 Forwards:
    Name
    Club
    Cost
    Points


    Van Persie
    ARS
    13.2
    147

    Aguero
    MCI
    11.1
    120

    Ba
    NEW
    7.6
    116



    On the basis that Forwards appear to be scoring more points than other positions, I'd be reasonably confident that a team that has consistently fielded 3 forwards should be outscoring a team that has consistently fielded 2.

    Using the same reasoning, I'd be confident that a team that has minimised the number of Defenders, i.e. kept it to 3, will have outscored a team that has consistently fielded 4 or 5.

    I've included the top players in each position by way of illustration. It'd be difficult to find a valid formation of 11 players from these while keeping within the limitations of a €100m budget. However, you should be able to pull down the full lists of all (cheaper) players for each position from the FF website.

    You'd have to take each possible formation, then run the players in every possible valid permutation within that formation, i.e. a valid permutation is one that keeps within the €100m budget and the limit of only three players from one Club. Then take the average points score for each formation and compare it across the others. Simple! Anyone fancy running the numbers?!

    I've left out the other complicating factor which is that one of your players each week must be selected as Captain whereby his points tally is doubled for the week in question. I don't think this would interfere with the basic analysis though, i.e. to figure out which formation tends to score the most points. In fact, there are any number of other complicating factors which could arise and I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. But overall, I think an analysis conducted within the parameters set out above would provide some useful results.


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 155 ✭✭TheLynx


    jackie-chan-whut.jpg


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 175 ✭✭thecheese


    I like to see these kind of ideas and would give it a go myself but I've got exams coming up!

    Had a similar idea in that I wanted to use linear programming to pick a fantasy football team at the start of the year. A quick search on google however revealed it had been done before... Here's the link if you're interested (not my blog)

    http://craven-projects.blogspot.com/2010/08/choosing-fantasy-football-team-using.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2 Sunstream


    How about simply analyzing the "teams of the week"? I.e. compute the frequency distribution across formations. This will tell you which formation comes up trumps most often and also give you an idea of the variability etc.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 363 ✭✭cmssjone


    Does anyone know where we could actually download the data from previous years? I'm really interested in doing some statistical analysis on this but really don't want to have to type the data in by hand.


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