Fantasy Premier League 2018/19: Finding value for money

English Premier League starts in a few days and along with it, so does Fantasy Premier League, the official online Fantasy Football game. I've been playing it for a few years now and every year, around the start of the season, I write a blog about it. I also organize a private league within the official FPL with my colleagues at work.

When the 2015/16 season started, I wrote about some of the key players that joined the Premier League that season. Before the 2016/17 season, I wrote a 4 part series on key players worth signing. I focused on key signings by positions - goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards. Last season, I wrote about a few important practices of managing an FPL team. This year, I've decided to go for something different. I'm gonna talk about 3 step process for scouting players from weak teams that are good value for money. There are 2 main reasons for doing this.

1. Everyone has a limited budget of £100, to begin with. You can only buy so many high-value players with that amount. So you need a few cheap players that are likely to perform, get you points and eventually rise up in value. 
2. Every now and then, there are Gameweeks when most of the usual suspects i.e. the in-form players fail to perform well. As a result, the performance of most teams falls during these Gameweeks. Having the ability to find the unusual suspects and having a few of those in your squad can help you get supernormal returns in such Gameweeks and give you an edge above the rest of your mates. 
3. Scouting these players early also helps you to build money in your bank. If you're able to scout players before others do, you get them at a lower value. Then, as they begin to perform and more people start buying them, the price of these players rise. Once their price reaches a point which doesn't justify their expected future returns, you can sell them and get a profit. This gives you more purchasing power and the ability to buy more of the consistent players for your squad, which are usually more expensive.

So here's a simple 3 step process to filter out potential performers from the rest.

Step 1: Decide the position for which you’re seeking value players

Deciding the position is the first and the foremost step of the process. This will determine the teams in which you’ll be seeking players and subsequently, finding the players that expect to give you good returns for a lower value.

It is also worthwhile to decide how many such players you should keep
in each of these. Personally, I try to keep about 2-3 such players in my defense and about 1 each in midfield and offense. Of course, this may change from time to time, depending on the fixtures and how various players are performing in the league.

Step 2: Decide the teams 

Whenever I’m looking for a defender, I typically look at mid-table teams. These teams have a significantly large group of teams against which their defenders are likely to get clean sheets/score/provide assists. They are expected to do well against teams at the bottom of the table, and not concede too many against bigger teams. They’re also more likely to cause upsets against top of the table teams in their home turfs.

Picking up defenders from teams at the bottom end is very risky. There’s a smaller pool of teams against which you can expect them to get clean sheets or score or provide an assist (in the case of full-backs). Even if one of these teams ends up having a good run of fixtures, there’s the added risk that these matches can easily turn into goal fests. In such a case, you’re actually worse off as you might even end up picking negatives for cards and conceding too many goals.

When it comes to forwards, I am willing to take more risks and look at mid-table teams as well as those that are likely to end up in the bottom half of the table.

It is also worthwhile to do a little more digging about how these teams like to play. Some teams are known for a stronger defense but don't score a lot. On the other hand, there are teams which will score goals but at the same time, concede several too. This also helps in deciding the positions for which you need to pick players from these teams.

Out of the teams you shortlist for various positions, put players that are likely to perform in your watch-list. How to decide on which players to pick and when? That’s the next step.

Step 3: Filter out players worth transferring in

Out of the pool of the players that you’d shortlisted and put on your watch-list, whenever you wish to find players worth transferring in from various clubs, filter on the basis of:

1. Next 3-5 fixtures
2. Performances over the last 3-5 weeks.

Filtering out on the basis of future fixtures is easy. FPL gives a difficulty rating from 1 to 5 (1 being easiest, 5 being the most difficult) for each of the fixtures that a player is facing. If the average of those ratings is low (less than 3), the player is expected to have easy fixtures over the next few weeks. If it’s high, the player’s future fixtures are difficult (normally 3.5 and up). An average difficulty between 3-3.5 means the player is expected to face teams against which their performance can go either way. In these situations, the decision to transfer a player in will depend on their own individual form in the recent past. This brings us to filtering the players out on the basis of their individual performance.

Fig1. Average Fixture Difficulty Rating (AFDR) by month for all PL teams. I update it every month as well.

Since these are players from teams which do not usually win week in and week out, it’s important to look at their past performance with a bit of a forgivable lens. If a mid-table defender conceded several goals against potential league winners but did well against other mid-table teams, then that’s still a defender worth taking. The same goes for forwards and midfielders. If they’ve bombed against top teams, but have done well against others in their past 5 fixtures, they’re likely to do well when they face an easier run of fixtures.

Combining these two factors is more of an art than science. Add to it, your own personal gut feelings, preferences towards and biases against certain players. After all this, you’ll be able to arrive at a much smaller pool of players which you can potentially transfer in.  

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Just to wrap things up, you need to realize that your guesses and judgments may not always be right. That's the main reason why the Premier League is the best league in the world. That's what makes it so interesting. However, with time and practice, you will start developing an eye for these things. You'll have gut feelings which you won't always be able to explain and with time, more often than not, they will pay off.

If you have any questions, comments or views about this article or anything related to FPL, feel free to put them down in the comments section below. I always love to hear from my readers.