This latest look at fixture difficulty assesses how much the opposition alters the performance of some of the key Fantasy Football players and in particular captaincy options. Are they scoring well in certain fixtures because they are easy, or are they are fixture-proof players who can score well whatever the opposition?

Shots In the Box Conceded

FFScout Fixture Ranking

The above attempts to answer that issue. The first image uses the aggregate shots in the box conceded for the first 13 Gameweeks by each opposition team they have faced and the second uses the Fantasy Football Scout fixture ticker ranking for the team. They are both fairly similar.

Results

The key takeaways for me are:

Vardy and Mahrez have indeed faced an easy start to the season. It is valid to question whether they will be able to continue that form over the next 13 weeks starting with MUN this week

Kane, Ighalo and Lukaku have done really well despite tough fixtures, all three have good fixtures going forward so expect their good form to continue

Rooney and Martial and to a lesser degree Costa and Hazard have faced tough fixtures on average, some improvement especially with CHE easier fixtures can be expected

Sanchez has not done that well considering his relatively easy fixtures, if he doesn’t perform over the next 3-4 probably wise to get rid.

The downside of this analysis is that the correlations between fixture difficulty and goals scored for both these set of players and the whole population is very low (statistically insignificant). You can see that Harry Kane, Odion Ighalo, Romelu Lukaku and Philippe Coutinio in particular have scored well despite harder fixtures. Sadio Mane, Bafetembi Gomis and Kevin De Bryune are the opposite way. This is worrying for people that rely primarily on fixtures to choose a captain and bring players in. As I have shown before there is a higher correlation between Shots on Target (77% this season for these players) and Expected Goals (70%) and performance than fixtures.

Lukaku

A special mention goes to Lukaku, who far from being a troll who fails to score when you expect, he has behaved more predictably. Quite simply, the easier the opposition, the more goals he scores, which could bode well away to Bournemouth this weekend.