FPL Write up – Week 2 – Dada Olamide

This week’s Fantasy Premier league write up shows data from team with most accumulated points and explores the subject around the value around expected goals, is it a myth or worth looking into. Please enjoy

In Geology, there is a popular saying that goes “The past is the key to forecasting the future”.
While such a statement seems so obvious and intuitive, we often fall victim to the lessons of the past.
The financial market (which shares a lot of similarities to the fantasy league) has the number 1 spot in
this regard. For those who read my last article, I am not a fantasy player but rather a data enthusiast
whose job here is to provide unbiased articles to aid in your selection.

So in the spirit of historical data dive, I will be looking at data from two years ago. The question
we will answer or at least aim to answer is what metric has the highest correlation for goals scored and
also is expected goal is they to understanding actual goals scored? As I previously mentioned in my last
article, you want to see trends before it is trendy. Before we get to the juicy stuff, lets briefly have a
weekly recap.

Weekly Recap
How my weekly recap works: I look at data from the top 31 player in terms of points
accumulated. Point out some obvious things and changes from the week before!!

TOPIC OF THE WEEK
What is the best predictor of goals scored by Forwards?
For this exercise, we will look at five metrics
❖ Expected goals
❖ Penalty Touches
❖ Goal Attempts
❖ Big chances
❖ Shots on target

Lets dig in and enjoy what the data is telling us and also you will see( R2) this is a regression,
the higher the R2, the better the prediction. As an example, a R2 of 0.9 means that it is better predictor than a R
2 of 0.1. (keep in mind the maximum R2 you can have is 1). As a rule
of thumb anything above 0.65 is good. (and to my data scientists, yes, I know)

 

Summary: No surprise that all these metrics were good predictors of goals scored but the
clear winners are Expected goals and Shots on target. This is a good way to predicts players
who are more likely to score the most goals this season. So, see below, the top 5 players for
these three metrics.

Well there you have it, best of luck this week. Please provide
feedback