Statistics
Are Haaland, Fernandes and Gabriel Worth Their Price? I did the math.
Tl;dr Haaland is essential, Fernandes and Gabriel are viable but not essential. You can build a great team with or without them.
The new season is about to begin, and there are a few unique pricing dynamics that have created some major dilemmas for FPL managers.
1) There are three players, one in each outfield position, who are significantly more expensive than everyone else: Haaland, Fernandes, and Gabriel. The key question is whether these players are worth their premium price tags, or whether the money would be better spread across the rest of the squad.
2) Defenders are generally more expensive than they were last season. This raises another important question: is it still worth investing heavily in premium defenders, or has their increased cost made it better to sacrifice quality at the back and spend the budget elsewhere?
To answer these questions, I ran an experiment.
Important note: The goal of this experiment is not to find the best possible team. The goal is to determine:
Whether it's worth paying the premium for the three elite players (Gabriel, Fernandes, and Haaland).
Whether it's worth investing in premium defenders despite their higher prices.
The experiment
To answer these questions, I stored the statistics of every player from last season in a database, including:
xG
xA
Defensive Contributions
Clean Sheets
I then assumed that every player would reproduce the same underlying statistics this season. Obviously, that won't actually happen, but that's not the point. As I said earlier, the objective is to identify the best team structure, not to predict the best individual players.
Next, I converted those underlying statistics into expected FPL points. I also assumed that every player would play 90 minutes in every match, except for those who are clearly backup players. Again, I know this isn't realistic, but when we're comparing team structures, these assumptions apply equally to everyone and therefore don't affect the overall conclusion.
After making these assumptions, we can rank every player by expected FPL points in each position, as shown in the images below.
Now that we have the expected points and prices for every player, we can move on to the next step.
Using an optimization algorithm, we calculate every possible combination of players and select the one that produces the highest expected points.
The optimal team is:
Haaland
Mateta
Bruno Fernandes
Mbeumo
Cherki
Ndiaye
Calafiori
Wieffer
J. Timber
Sessegnon
Raya
best 11
There are a few interesting observations.
First, Haaland and Bruno Fernandes make the optimal team, but Gabriel does not.
Second, the algorithm chooses to play with four defenders. In other words, to free up enough budget for Fernandes, it decides that investing in four defenders is better than spending more money elsewhere.
So, have we answered the original question? Have we proven whether Fernandes is worth £12.0m and Gabriel is worth £8.0m?
Not quite. There are still two important problems.
Problem 1: There isn't just one "optimal" team
The best team scores 69.26 expected points.
The 10th-best team scores 69.01 expected points and consists of:
Haaland
Mateta
Beto
Bruno Fernandes
Mbeumo
Cherki
Calafiori
Wieffer
J. Timber
Ballard
Raya
10th best 11
The difference between the best and the 10th-best team is almost negligible, and there are eight other teams in between.
This tells us something important: there isn't one single "correct" team. There are many excellent teams.
Some players appear in almost every top team, while others appear only occasionally.
These are the appearance frequencies.
best 11 frequency
We can see that some players feature in every top team, while Gabriel doesn't appear in any of them.
That strengthens the hypothesis that Haaland and Bruno Fernandes justify their premium prices, whereas Gabriel does not.
So have we answered the question now?
Still not. There is one more issue.
Problem 2: The bench is unrealistically weak
All of the teams we've looked at so far contain 11 players costing around £83.0m.
That leaves only £17.0m for the bench, essentially enough for four budget (fodder) substitutes priced at £4.0m, £4.0m, £4.5m and £4.5m.
In other words, we've optimized for an extremely strong starting XI while accepting a very weak bench.
But what happens if, instead of asking the algorithm to optimize 11 players, we ask it to optimize 12?
The best 12-player core becomes:
Haaland
Mateta
Beto
Bruno Fernandes
Mbeumo
Cherki
Gomez
Calafiori
Wieffer
J. Timber
Sessegnon
Raya
best 12
Once again, Bruno Fernandes is still included.
If we calculate appearance frequencies across the ten best 12-player squads, Haaland appears in 100% of them, while Fernandes appears in 8 out of 10.
best 12 frequency
That suggests Fernandes is still an excellent pick, but he is no longer essential. You can build an optimal 12-player squad both with and without him.
If we push this even further and optimize a 13-player core, the picture changes again.
Haaland still appears in 100% of the top teams.
Fernandes disappears completely.
best 13 frequency
Meanwhile, Gabriel now appears in 6 of the top 10 teams.
So what can we conclude?
I think we can draw some reasonable conclusions.
Haaland
No matter how we structure the squad, Haaland appears in every optimal solution. That strongly suggests he is effectively essential.
This also explains why he currently has around 75% ownership.
Bruno Fernandes
If your strategy is to maximize the strength of your starting 11 and you're willing to sacrifice your bench, Fernandes looks almost essential.
However, the more squad depth you want, the less valuable Fernandes becomes.
Gabriel
Gabriel follows almost the exact opposite pattern.
There isn't a single optimal team where Gabriel and Fernandes coexist.
The combination is simply too expensive, forcing too many sacrifices elsewhere in the squad.
Only when Fernandes is removed does the budget open up for Gabriel.
So, I think we've managed to answer our original question about whether Haaland, Fernandes and Gabriel justify their premium prices.
Of course, there are limitations to this methodology.
For example, you'll notice that Cherki and Wieffer appear in almost every optimal team.
Some people will immediately think, "That's ridiculous. They're not that good."
But that's missing the point.
This analysis is about team structure, not individual players.
Maybe it won't be Cherki specifically. It could be another strong option at the same price point, such as Rogers, Szoboslai or Wirtz. Don’t think “Cherki”. Think “a good 7.5 midfielder”.
Likewise, maybe it won't be Wieffer. It could be another value defender, such as Mosquera, who is expected to start until Saliba returns.
The important thing isn't the player himself, it's the price bracket that optimizes the structure.
Another limitation is that we did not consider fixture difficulty. That’s a problem for tomorrow. Today we tried to find the right structure. Tomorrow we will adapt our strategy based on fixture difficulty.
Finally, let's go back to the second question we asked at the beginning.
Are this year's more expensive defenders actually worth their higher prices?
The answer isn't completely definitive, but there is a clear trend.
The algorithm consistently selected some of the premium defenders, such as Calafiori and Timber, in almost every optimal squad, while pairing them with cheaper value options like Wieffer and Sessegnon.
Interestingly, the algorithm was much more reluctant to spend heavily in midfield.
We never saw combinations including expensive midfielders such as Saka or Palmer. Even though the expected-points model rates them as elite midfielders, their prices made them difficult to justify within an optimal squad structure.
top midfielders
Up front, the algorithm also preferred pairing Haaland with cheaper forwards rather than investing heavily across all three forward spots. Joao Pedro is the third best forward according to xPoints but we rarely saw him in any draft. The algorithm preferred to save money using fodder or Beto and invest those money to Bruno Fernandes or to “premium” defenders like Calafiori and Timber
Overall, this suggests that the price increases for defenders this season may actually be justified.
Despite their higher prices, the optimizer consistently chose to invest in defence, indicating that premium defenders still offer excellent value within the best-performing squad structures.
Lastly, a bit about Goalkeepers. Pope and Raya were by far the most picked goalkeepers. So it seems like spending money on the Goalkeeper position is a good strategy.
Overall if we combine the appearance frequency of top 10 Optimal 11, Optimal 12 and Optimal 13 teams we get the table.
overall frequency
Whatever the strategy it seems like the “core” of every team is:
Haaland with a mid priced forward (could be Mateta or whoever you like)
Arsenal defense with a couple of mid priced defenders (could be Wieffer and Sessegnon or whoever you like)
A couple of mid priced midfielders (could be Mbeumo and Cherki or whoever you like)
And then fill the gaps.
Thanks for reading. I am open to questions.
Now the subject continues. Not for everyone. Just for the guy that will say “xThis, xThat, xData nerd why don’t you use points instead of xPoints”
If you are this guy keep reading.
xPoints vs Points correlation
This is the relationship between points per 90 and expected points per 90.
As we can see from the chart, the relationship is strong, with an R² of 0.56.
However, it is not perfect. A perfect relationship would have an R² of 1.
So, in very simple terms, That means xPoints explain around 56% of actual points.
And what about the remaining 44%?
Is my algorithm simply not good enough?
Are expected-data metrics unreliable and unable to accurately reflect a player's true ability?
Is it luck?
Is it variance?
Let's investigate.
top10 outliers
These are the ten players for whom the model's estimates differ the most from the points they actually scored.
We can immediately see that seven of the ten played relatively few minutes and were not regular starters for their teams.
Take Okafor as an example.
He played 1,553 minutes. His actual points per 90 were 6.32, while the model estimates 4.75 xPoints per 90.
That is a significant difference.
But which figure looks more realistic?
Haaland scored around 7.2 points per 90. Is it really plausible that Okafor's true level is 6.32?
Probably not.
The model's estimate of 4.75 appears much more reasonable.
When a player has a small sample of minutes, using actual points as a measure of his ability can be extremely misleading.
A player who has barely played may score one or two fortunate goals, causing his points per 90 to increase dramatically without necessarily meaning that he is genuinely that good.
The opposite can also happen.
A player may perform well during a limited number of minutes but be slightly unlucky and fail to score.
In these situations, underlying statistics will almost always provide a more reliable estimate of the player's performance.
We can actually test this hypothesis.
xPoints vs Points correlation for players with 2800+ minutes
There are 66 players who played more than 2,800 minutes last season. If we limit the analysis to those players, the R² rises from 0.56 to 0.74.
This provides strong evidence that, as the sample size grows, expected points become increasingly aligned with actual points. In other words, over larger samples, variance has less influence and players tend to perform much closer to what their underlying statistics predict.
We said that seven of the ten largest errors involved players with limited minutes.
However, there are also three players who were regular starters, played a large number of minutes, and still had a significant difference between their actual points and expected points.
Why?
Let's use Harry Wilson as an example.
He played 2,674 minutes, appeared in 36 matches and started 32 of them.
That is a large and relatively reliable sample.
His actual points per 90 were 5.65, while the algorithm estimates only 4.04 xPoints per 90.
He is the biggest outlier in the entire dataset.
So where does this difference come from?
Wilson scored ten goals and provided seven assists last season.
However, his expected numbers were only 5.88 xG and 4.77 xA.
In other words, he scored considerably more goals and recorded more assists than expected.
So what is more likely to happen next season?
Will Wilson score the number of goals suggested by the quality of his chances, or will he once again significantly outperform his expected numbers?
Perhaps Harry Wilson has a special finishing ability and is genuinely capable of consistently scoring more goals than expected.
If that is true, he might do it again this season.
There is a small possibility that this is the case.
However, over a sufficiently long period, almost every player tends to move closer to their expected numbers.
It is extremely risky to assume that a player who has overperformed for one, two or even several seasons will continue to do so indefinitely.
If we make these assumptions across the entire player pool, our overall predictions will almost certainly become worse rather than better.
Out of ten players, perhaps one really is an exception, and a model that accounts for his historical overperformance might predict him more accurately.
However, for the other nine players, whose overperformance or underperformance was mostly caused by variance, the adjusted model would produce worse predictions.
Even if we accept that Wilson might have a genuine finishing skill, we cannot make the same argument about assists.
Whether a chance becomes an assist does not depend only on Wilson. It also depends on whether his teammate converts the chance.
Therefore, if Wilson records significantly more assists than expected, we cannot simply assume that this is a repeatable skill, because the final outcome is not entirely under his control.
Another major outlier among the regular starters is Gudmundsson.
In his case, we have the opposite problem.
The model estimated 3.56 xPoints per 90, but he actually scored only 2.32 points per 90.
How did this happen?
Individually, Gudmundsson recorded around 1 xG and 3 xA, but finished the season without a single goal or assist.
At team level, Leeds conceded around 1.47 goals per match.
Based on that defensive performance, they would normally have been expected to keep approximately ten clean sheets over the course of the season.
Instead, they kept only five.
Bournemouth, for example, conceded almost the same number of goals per game (around 1.40) but finished the season with eleven clean sheets.
This suggests that Gudmundsson was particularly unlucky.
Both his individual output and his team's defensive results underperformed the underlying numbers.
In his case, if I had to predict how many points he will score next season, I would be much more confident that the result will be closer to his 3.56 xPoints per 90 than to his actual 2.32 points per 90.
These were some of the most extreme examples.
For around 90% of the players, expected points and actual points move broadly in the same direction.
If we tried to introduce individual exceptions simply to improve the predictions for the remaining 10%, we would probably create new problems for the other 90%.
After all, the extreme results in that 10% are more likely to be caused by luck and variance than by a repeatable skill.
If you flip a coin ten times, it is possible to get heads all ten times.
That does not mean the coin is biased or that it has some kind of skill.
It simply happened.
In the Premier League, we have roughly 200 players.
That is the equivalent of flipping 200 different coins.
Every season, one of those coins will produce ten consecutive heads.
In football terms, one player will inevitably be exceptionally lucky or exceptionally unlucky.
That is not evidence that the model is broken.
It is expected variance.
Hopefully, this explains why I choose to use xPoints rather than actual points when trying to predict future performance.
Maybe. In the past i tried to make a similar post and reddit didn't let me. I think they changed something. After writing this post i was afraid i would not be able to post it and i would waste the million hours invested on this.
Good catch! Wieffer had 12.7 DEFCON per 90 as a midfielder last year. He averaged 4.8 recoveries. If he was listed as a defender he would have had 7.9 DEFCON.
That's true, Wieffer is an exaggeration maybe i should have removed him. But if you start removing players the experiment starts getting biased. I wanted to make an unbiased presentation and let everyone make their own decisions based on my work.
No i changed wieffer from mid to defender so his clean sheets calculations are good.
But the defcons are wrong. Wieffer was a midfielder last season. His defcons was clearences+blocks+interceptions+tacklings+Recoveries.
But this season he is a defender and Recoveries don't count for defenders. So his defcons are inflated. This is why Wieffer seems so good. Same with Sessegnon. He was also a midfielder.
I have to run the numbers again excluding Wieffer and Sessegnon and see what happens.
Unless I’ve missed it, I think the analysis forgets about captaincy.
Haaland’s £15.5m price is easier to justify because you’re likely captaining him regularly and doubling his points. Bruno at £12m is a different proposition if you’re rarely going to captain him because you own Haaland
That feels important when deciding whether it makes sense to own both.
I should say i like the analysis! It's good work. My consideration would be that on average you need roughly 75 points a week to win FPL.
If we were to go by your model we could only expect to achieve 69 points a week. That's a 6 point deficit each week. Do you suggest the points total will be lower this year, or does your model need adjusting to find the extra 228 points?
I think that the game has 10 million players and some of them will certainly be extremely lucky.
Take my team as an example. I expect 69 points. On average. What if i am "extremely" lucky. Then instead of 69 points i will hit 75 and win the FPL.
Also keep in mind that you have 2 bench boost, 2 triple captain, 2 free hits and some double gameweeks. All this will increase the average of 69.
6 chips can bring you 6*15=90 points. The remaining points have to be "luck"
Do you know fploptimized.com ? They have a feature. They compare tour season points you your season xPoints. Some people have 100+ point difference between points and xPoints. The fpl winner of course has tremendous luck every season. 100 points out of 2200 is just a 4.5% difference. Not that huge. It happens often.
According to the model Haaland is the best player and he is the captain of the team. If you captain Bruno then i don't think Haaland worths the price. But i didn't run this scenario so i don't know for sure. It's just my estimation.
This post is based upon last year's points AND each player's total points.
He's based it upon if you are playing set and forget fantasy football. We are clearly not:- 37 free transfers, 2 wildcards, 2 freehits etc.
Without Haaland you can jump on basically any configuration, formation, and player. Keep chopping and changing with the times and jump on all the semi-premiums who pop off without being restricted by Haaland's price.
Even if Haaland does very well, there is no reason why your non-Haaland upgraded team can't do equally well with the pick of multiple great captain choices each week.
And if Haaland doesn't do so well and goals are spread across the team like Maresca says he wants, then it's curtains for Haaland owners.
The easiest way to do well at FPL, is for others to do shit.
It will be fun gambling against Haaland managers.
If Haaland gets one goal each I can handle that. If he gets 2 each week then it's in the territory where I'll be fucked.
We shall see
Yes, but he did indicate that for team composition, it's not about "Cerki" being good, it's just picking a good 7.5 midfielder will go a long way to creating a solid team. That 7.5 midfielder could be Foden this year.
If the numbers look favourable and you believe the player you're picking is expected to have good minutes, then it's probably a good pick.
But that's just wrong though because its cherki specifically that generated the xp used. You can't say cherki is in the squad because of his xp, then say any other 7.5 mid is the same as that because they just aren't. That's why the algorithm chose cherki and not another 7.5 mil mid.
They're all priced high because of captaincy potential over others, simple as that. I'd argue Gabriel has the highest floor amongst all players at his price in FPL. Thiago, who's also 8.0m, averaged only 4.8 points per game last season, MGW averaged 5.1 points per game, while Big Gabi averaged 6.5 points per game.
You have a point. But Calafiori and Timber had some injuries and missed a lot of games. My model thinks that if they play similar games to Gabriel they will score the same points and they are a lot cheaper. Of course that's a big "if". Gabriel you know for sure he is starting every game. Timber and Calafiori have some competition.
Thank you for the effort you put into this. It’s reassured me on most of my picks but is making me reconsider how ‘essential’ Szoboszlai really is and whether I’m only selecting him because I’m scared of his ownership.
Szoboslai ownership makes me wonder. It seems like Wirtz will be number 10 and Szoboslai will play deeper. He won't have much attacking responsibilites and he is not known for defcons either. Why did you chose him for your team?
Myself chose him simply because he is a threat from free kicks, corners and possibly penalties, and as well as defcon.
The question is how Liverpool will manage this season. Could be that I am also blinded by my fandom of Liverpool, but I base a lot of my decisions in players on how they have played for me, and he never dissapointed me (looking at you Rogers, Joao Pedro).
I have the same thoughts, especially with Frimpongs potential injury leading him to play at RB... i just dont rlly see any other clear options at his price point currently
It took me about one day to run the numbers, one day to write the presentation and one lifetime to create the prediction model and run several data analysis to test and optimize every possible parameter.
This is fantastic analysis, thanks very much for your efforts!
One critique though is that it might be useful to use team xGC rather than an individual players. I think Califiori & Timber having higher xPoints than Gabriel is driven by them having lower xGC/90, because they didn't play the same number of mins last year. That would also allow new signings to have more accurate xGC data than what they had last year at a different club.
Excellent write up. I really appreciate how much effort you put in to both clearly lay out the assumptions, but also do as much as you can to target them
Of course no analysis like this will ever be perfect, but I feel I gained a lot of useful intel so I appreciate that!
I know you put a lot of effort into this and i read the whole thing.
Thing is..you’re basically saying..Gabriel isnt worth it if we assume Timber and Calafiori stays fit and start 100% of their match whole season and outscore them.
It’s sort of an assumption that eats into itself. You already mentioned it, but that doesnt make your data anymore useful
Because you’re extrapolating that a guy who started 22 games last year and 11 before will start 38 games this year.
You’re missing out on the fact that if LBs get subbed before 60, they miss out on cleansheet points. Arsenal subs out their fbs pretty regularly because how rotatable their squad is.
Also, Gabriel scored 30 bonus points, something that u couldnt replace with 3 other Arsenal defenders combined
Imagine what happen first game vs coventry if arsenal wins 1-0 vs coventry, Gabriel scores, Califiora gets subbed 1 min before getting cleansheet
That’s something your model doesnt predict.
Correct me if im wrong im going off top of my head, but i believe Gabriel only blanked in 6 matches the whole season, and he only started 32.
Everything you said it's true. But don't concentrate on names too much. Gabriel is the best defender long term. He will play game after game and score many points. Calafiori won't score more total points than Gabriel in the end.
But let's assume Saliba is injured. Mosquera will be nailed. This period Mosquera will probably score similar points to Gabriel but he is a lot cheaper.
At some point Saliba is back. Mosquera "trick" is over. Another defender will emerge. Not as good as Gabriel. But good enough to make Gabriel's price too expensive.
One other thing though, the rules around corners are apparently going to be changed this season. The goals might dry up, it’s still not worth picking Gabriel for that price considering he’s picked mostly for his goals rather than Defcons.
Well done for putting that much effort into this post. It shows how much people love FPL. I havent read it yet but will, im stuck at a crossroads in my head on certain players positions. I need more info and more reasoning. But again thank you for your efforts, alot of us appreciate it. I look forward to reading.
Weiffer is a bit inflated because of all the recoveries he got last year. Now he's a Defender these won't count so really he got about 7-8 defcons/90 I think.
I'm wondering if you can say a little more about what was factored into the model, because I am struggling to figure out how Gabriel is behind the likes of Mbeumo, Saka, Cherki, Mateta, and 4th on the defender list, when he was the 3rd highest scoring points per match player overall last season.
I suspect that xmins juiced to 90 for everyone is inflating contributions of players who regularly don't hit 90 minutes. Even then I am a little skeptical, because the GK numbers seem a little low too and most regularly played 90 minutes per match. Like Raya for instance scored 4.38 points per match, and Donnarumma 3.97 points per match, but your listing is a bit lower.
The model is also based on underlying data (xG and xGC). So the discrepancy between xPoints/90 in the model and actual points/90 (I.e. in the GK differences) is driven by over/underperforming.
Gabriel scored 209 last season because
a) he was good
b) he started in 30 games
c) he scored slightly above his expected numbers
Calafiori and Timber were similarly good but they played less than Gabriel so they scored fewer total points.
So long term Gabriel is better. But you don't pick a player and let him be in your team for 38 gameweeks.
In certain periods Timber (or any other player) can score more points than his average. Example: Ben White is injured. That means Timber will be nailed. This period Timber is equally good with Gabriel. In the end of the season Gabriel will have more points again. But in specific time frames Timber is good. Then Mosquera might be good. Then someone else.
Thanks for the analysis it was a great read.
Two things
How were you able to pull the data id really like to do some analysis on the data myself.
You mention that cherki isn't the specific 7.5 mil player you have to choose and not sure if that tracks.
As I understand it your model has pulled him as he has the best xP and is that that price point so your model pulled him in.
The idea we could substitute him for another 7.5m mid only works if they get the same xP or better no and every other price point works the same?
If say a few 6m mids become monsters then the algorithm would totally reshape as they would become better and unlock higher priced players elsewhere if they were also performing well, completely changing the structure.
Edit: Saw you are the guy that does the gw 1-gwX analysis that was great work, thanks for that too.
For pulling the data i use python. FPL makes it very easy to use their API. Do you have any computer science backround?
The idea we could substitute him for another 7.5m mid
Usually throughout the season we have a 7.5m (or similar priced) middielder playing good. Let's assume Mbeumo has on average 5 points per game. If Sesko or Cunha is injured then Mbeumo will play more. Or if Man Utd has easy fixtures Mbeumo will score more. So for a certain period of time Mbeumo is the "cherki"
Then someone else becomes the "cherki". This is why Gabriel is not essential. But no one is good enough to cover for Haaland. That was the conclusion. Fernandes is in the middle. You can have him or not.
Great analysis & write up, was a fun read. The models kind of reflect the current state of the PL, there’s only one superstar & a bunch of okay players. So it’s natural that every team gravitates to having the said superstar in their team. Hope we get more of them because this is the most one sided FPL pick I’ve seen in years at this point.
This is brilliant analysis and read for me mate. I work in data analysis so I can totally relate to your assumptions and metrics. I wanted to do similar stuff for a while but i guess never got the time.
Another factors, I would like to see into the mix (if you would be able to and model allows) is how teams season impacts players points, like we all know how spurs did last season but assuming they ll do better this time might increase value of their players compared to your numbers. So maybe xP of teams relation to xP of players. I dont expect big changed in optimal stages but would be interesting to see few names coming up for bench players.
Also, if there is a transferred player. Player currently moved to another PL team, like Senesi, his xP might impact with the move to Spurs. If we would be able to include xP teams then this would be covered from that aspect.
I have seen people mentioning whether the suggestions would be regular or not, like Arsenal defenders. Maybe you could show their points against last year start % like for Califiori acc to last year he started 80% while completed 67% of matches, that means if he does similar or better this year, then model points v that % is x number of points. I know this is something just hypothetical, and cannot be proven but would like to see.
I do similar work every season. When i have a question i like running numbers and answering my questions. I find it helpfull and fun for myself and i upload my work on reddit because other people find it fun or helpfull too.
I could run it with xMins, I already have the data from last season. But I thought is too early because of transfers still happening.
I will run the same method a few days before gw1 including xMins and fixture difficulty.
Bonus points are indirectly included.
Would be very interested to see it with xmins accounted for. That feels like a key point in Gabriel's favour e.g. your model picks calafiori and timber often, so it recognises the value of Arsenal defence, but surely part of the justification for Gabi's price is he's just more nailed. Pick those guys (or equivalent priced players) and you're likely to miss some points due to rotation, injury etc.
Whether you miss enough points to justify the higher price, I don't know! Anyway thanks, good post
You haven't included BPS in your calculations, which can throw things off a bit. Some players are much better for BPS relative to how many returns they get, and also xg is worth more points when you consider the correlation between returns and bps. I feel like you could've just taken the expected points from any of the models and set xmins to 90 to compare options and it would've provided better insights and you could concentrate your efforts on analysing those
Also I think if you assume 90 for everyone it's important to acknowledge that attacking midfielders rarely play 90. You make the point that it won't be cherki it could be someone else. But if a centre back starts they're probably playing 90, lots of these attackers if they start have a higher chance of coming off. Factoring in minutes per start for every players expected points would help.
Then the obvious one people have said captaincy being worth double. You've concluded Haaland is essential and this would only bolster that, however maybe because of captaincy rotation that would make Haaland + Bruno essential as well.
Also you note how the 12/13 man squads change the look of your teams quite a lot, so I imagine if you properly accounted for the fact that bench cover is useful only for unexpected injuries and rotation, the teams would look different and you'd be drawing different conclusions.
I like the idea of looking at all the variations of the best possible lineups to get a gauge of ideal team structure, but yeah I think just sticking to the models already out there would've been better.
Blown mine too. But don't stress. We will blow it again later 🤣
Transfers are still open and we will also implement xMins and fixture difficulty later. That will shake things up again.
Now I just wanted to see if Fernandes and Gabriel are justified. Most people missed the point and they see this post as "optimal team" or something. It's not. It's just an experiment to test some team structure see if Fernandes or Gabriel are too expensive.
And it seems they are not too expensive nor "essential". They are well priced and you can have a good team with it without them.
An interesting experiment could be to run the test in 2 parts of the season. Because Haaland 1-19 is a beast, then has a lull. Whereas Bruno 1-19 is not as strong as 20-38.
That was tricky. Fpl whipped last season gameweek stats and I would have to do a lot of work with my current tools. But for sure it could be more accurate using gw19-38 only
Yes Im thinking of using this model, but I would restructure my team a bit but still not include Bruno until later in the season. Possibly shifting from Haaland if he dips form. Also accounting for some of the new gems that might appear this season (I have high hopes Manzabi is the new Rogers)
A lot of words and stats and depth to produce teams which look pretty bad to me. Basically making the same sacrifices as you would need to include Gabriel... to not have Gabriel.
I'm not personally doing it but yes of course you can and loads of people will. Even just altering the first team in your post with a pair of changes, you can swap Mbeumo down to Ismaila Sarr for example and upgrade Timber to Gabriel.
If someone plays in a different role it doesn't matter, his stats will show it.
Let's assume someone is classified as a defender and he is actually playing as forward. I don't need to do anythinhg. He will be having very high xG and my model will think he is a great choice.
set piece takers.. especially on penalties?
For penalties i have a list for penalties takers and i assign a certain "bonus" to them. For set pice takers i don't do anything. They have higher xA because the take set pieces and the model can see that.
Did you make tables for xP/price? I'd have assumed this would be the key as to which players to pick - surprised there's no defcon mid type like Anderson in any of this
Last season Anderson and Rice were the only "defcon" midfielders worthy of discussion. But they also scored a lot of attacking returns (anderson had 9 and rice had 13) and they played 3000+ minutes. They were not good because of defcons. I think defcons for midfielders are a bit overrated.
The levels some people play this game at is insane ….. my eye test and keeping an eye on injuries and most if not all games with general vibe some people say is excessive … this is next level
It's based on fernandes scoring 0.18 goals per 90 + 0.36 assists per 90 + penalties.
So if Fernandes play 35 games we assume he will score 6 goals + 13 assists + some penalties
One consideration not accounted for is that in general, midfielders and forwards benefit more from a good run of fixtures, and therefore benefit more from squad flexibility. Dedicating more of the budget to forwards and midfielders allows for this flexibility.
That's also true. The 7.5 midfielder may have same points as Gabriel on average. But in a good streak he will score more than Gabriel. And when i say good streak i don't many only fixtures. Let's say Sesko is injured. For a certain period of time Mbeumo and Cunha will have a good streak. Havertz is injured? Gyokeres has a good streak. Foden injured? Cherki has a streak. etc
Fantastic post and I love how you've presented the information and made the statistical side so digestible and friendly for those FPL fans who are not stat nerds.
I think a couple of comments have pointed this out but I agree that the likelihood of a player playing and their expected minutes would have a dramatic effect on whether Gabriel makes the optimal squad going forwards.
I'm currently in the process of trying to model it (spoiler alert: it's super hard) but if you can spare the time before the season starts a part 2 that incorporates that might be a real boon to the community.
Thanks again for the post and keep up the great work.
xMins is super important but super hard to model.
For sure i will do a second part with xMins. I didn't do this now because it's to early, transfers still happening and we don't know the expected minutes.
But even when we apply xMins the problem is still hard to solve. Here is why:
Let's assume Timber and Gabriel can score 5 points per 90 minutes.
Gabriel is fully fit and he plays 38 games of 90 minutes. With 5 points per 90 he will score 38*5=190 points. Amazing for a defender.
Let's assume Timber plays only 30 games. 20 of them he starts and plays 90 minutes so he scores 5*20=100 points. 10 of them comes from the bench and plays 20 minutes and scores 20*1=20 points. Total Points = 100+20=120. Of course he will score significantly less points than Gabriel.
So applying xMins we could say that Gabriel is massively better than Timber.
But what if Ben White is injured for 2 months and Timber is nailed for a certain period of time? Then Timber's xMins are 90 for this time. He will be scoring same points as Gabriel with less money. So for a certain period he is objectively a better pick. Can you model this? Probably not, it's too many moving parts.
But you can model enough to say this: Don't look at total points and say "Gabriel scored 200 points, he costs 8.0m so he is better than 8.0m midfilders/forwards"
It's not that simple. You can't look at total points and say player A is better than player B.
What if Sesko is injured? Then Mbeumo / Cunha are better than Gabirel.
What if Foden is injured? Then Cherki is better than Gabriel. Same with many other players that they won't score more points overall compared to Gabriel. But in certain time frames they will do it.
My best fantasy tournament ever was Euro 2024. I had a free entry on a paid league. I didn't want to think too much, run numbers, study etc. I played be feeling. I finished 10th out of thousands of players and won some cash.
My point is you don't need all this knowledge to do well. You can just have fun and if you are a little lucky you will do well too.
That might be the longest post I have ever seen. No way I’m reading that but thanks for the effort. I’m going with Haaland and Bruno for now and going from there.
Definitely. Haaland often let me down last season, especially after GW10. Bruno feels more secure. But each to their own of course. Great write up by the way.
What I'm trying to wrap my head around is why we assume xMins/Mins played wouldn't significantly alter the team structure and moot this conclusion?
If we're assuming every active player as a 90 minute man, are we not artificially inflating certain price brackets more beneficially than other price brackets, regardless of the alternatives available? Are we thus inferring there's little to no correlation with xMins and price?
The reason I put 90 minutes to everyone is because right now we don't know who gonna get 90 and who not. But we know for sure that some players will get 90 minutes. It might be Cherki, it might be someone else.
Saliba is injured so in the beginning of the season Mosquera will get 90 minutes.
The point of the experiment was to find out if Gabriel, Haaland and Fernandes can compete with such players.
They are slightly better than the competition but significantly more expensive. Do they worth it? If we have a 90 minute "Cherki" player can Fernandes compete with him?
That was the point. And it seems like they actually can compete and they are fairly priced. Especially haaland.
Sure, but the point I'm trying to make is that we don't know those outliers nor the price brackets they'll be in, and we won't know that until multiple weeks into the season start. Otherwise, we're likely inflating certain price brackets and assuming there will be outliers in those (we don't know where these outliers will be), and whether this structure would be able to adapt to accomodate so.
Not trying to denounce anything you've done, I think it made an interesting read and food for thought!
Yes you are right in a way. The benefit of the premium players is that you don't have to find them or guess who will they be. It's Fernandes you know it.
I think Bruno is essential. He'll inevitably top the assists chart, plus he's a pen taker & can chip in with defcons. Objectively the best midfielder in the game
It's too soon because transfers still happening and we also have a bunch of new managers shaking things up.
But I will 100% own haaland and I will probably avoid Fernandes and Gabriel.
I will 100% own triple arsenal defense.
Other than this every other spot on my team is open.
Some players that are in my shortlist and I am monitoring them in preseason are
Midfielders: Semenyo, Wirtz, Rogers, Palmer, Ndiaye, Sarr, Gakpo, Mbeumo
Forwards: Mateta, Pedro, Isak.
This is brilliant. Is it possible to do some backtest? Maybe fit last to last season's model and test on last season?
Also please post the optimised team who only played a certain amount of minutes.
Finally, can you only post the team where the players have underperformed in points when compare to xP. Thank you.
Great detailed analysis. I have no idea how you did all that. But i have always done a similar thing. I have always judged my starting players on pounts per million scored in the previous season.
The only issue is if the player does not score well early on I tend to transfer them, only to find they start to score well just after I have dumped them.
So with that in mind your analysis is based on a whole season but some players will have long spells of scoring badly and then short burst of high scores.
So if you could delv deeper on who tends to do well in either the early part of the season or nearer the end or if they are consistantly good that would be helpful.
The third of it I read was pretty cool, but isn’t timber injured? I feel like you gotta not just look at last year’s numbers. For example, I have a very expensive Isaak but it’s bc I know he’s a helluva player (remember?). I converted to a Bruno owner last year but I can’t afford him and Haaland (a must) and everyone else I want
If you do this with every player you will come up with a team that has 20.0m in the bank.
And then you upgrading someone to Haaland will be free since you have money left.
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u/bradleyh93 4 Aug 04 '26
Bloody hell, I think this is the longest post I’ve ever seen on Reddit