Welcome again to our weekly series where we’ll be presenting you with the expected points of all the players ahead of Gameweek 20 using clean sheet and goal probabilities as calculated by the bookies, as well as our prediction tool

Quick Statement:

I (Piotr) would like to get everything out on the table so everyone understands where we are coming from and that hopefully, we can move on from a slightly unsavoury relationship with ‘Odds On FPL’ going forward.

As I have already stated, I admit that the concept of our prediction tool came as a result of following the model that Odds On FPL have created on their website. From their model, I felt I could enhance and potentially make the expected return results more accurate by including different variables into the algorithm. I also had a vision for something more and the model I’m doing and wish to ultimately create, was to include assists and bonus points into the expected returns calculation so it ultimately differed from what ‘Odds On FPL’ are currently offering.

Both ‘Odds on FPL’ and ‘Fantasy Bet’ were doing this kind of model before I thought of doing it, so the credit lies with them and if you wish to to use their model over mine then that is absolutely fine by me. You can find the work they do here >> https://www.oddsonfpl.com and here >> https://www.fantasybet.com

The aim, has never been to steal anyone’s idea, only to help the FPL community make more informed decisions so I am sorry for any disruption caused. I and the team at FPL Connect don’t now, nor will we in the future, charge for the content that’s provided, nor do I or they currently make money off it just to be clear.

Methodology

Our tool was presented to you at the beginning of the season so you can find the methodology and explanations of values here >> https://fplconnect.blog/2018/08/15/fpl-prediction-tool-gameweek-2/

Predicted assists were added to our tool before gameweek 10 to give a greater all-round feel and more accurate reflection to our predictions and calculations. You can find a simplified description of our expected assists calculation methodology here >> https://fplconnect.blog/2018/10/25/fpl-prediction-tool-gameweek-10/

We also have some ideas for improving our models even further but it requires some more time and resources which we don’t have access to yet. However, we believe that our current model gives viable results, whilst keeping it fairly simple at the same time.

Data from bookies

In the ‘Data from bookies’ sheet, you can find all data that was in our Excel file in previous weeks, like clean sheets probabilities, goals probabilities and predicted total points calculated from bookies odds, as well as our new feature – expected points for assists based on our new model.

‘Your team’ guide

In the ‘Your team’ sheet, you can choose your team and see what your expected score for that week would be as calculated using odds from the bookies.

Step 1: put your whole team of 15 players into column B by using the drop down boxes provided.

Step 2: choose which players will be in your starting 11 in column D by manually entering ‘1’s into the row that corresponds with the player you want to start and put ‘0’s into the row corresponding with the players you’re going to bench.

Step 3: choose your captain in column E by manually entering a ‘1’ into the row corresponding with the player you want to captain, and ensure the rest display ‘0’s.

Finish: once you’ve done that, your total expected score should be displayed in column H (cells H2 and H3 show the same expected score as for some people H2 cell was showing an error).

Blog team

In the last sheet, there is a table with predicted score and line-up of our FPL Connect blog team based on the prediction tool (you can read more about the team at the end of this article).

Please remember that this is a work in progress and we will continue to make improvements and add in more data and features as we go along.

Top 5 Goalkeepers

Top 10 Defenders

Top 10 Midfielders

Top 10 Forwards

Full spreadsheet link with all the players and the ‘Your Team’ feature

Download yourself a copy below and see how many points your team is expected to return based on clean sheet and goal probabilities from the bookies.

Excel version >> fpl 18-19 gameweek 20

Google sheets version >> Google sheets tool version

FPL Connect Team

Our team was built basing on our expected points calculations. We wanted to incorporate an element of realism with this, as we know we’re unable to create a new team every week to take advantage of the results of our tool, so we are managing the team ourselves, but the spine of it was built based on the results of our predictor tool.

We will make transfers each week as normal and will place the captain armband on whichever attacker (MID or FWD) has the highest expected score, as per the results of our tool.

Gameweek 19 score

So, this was an amazing gameweek for us! We have achieved massive 86 points while the average was 59 points. That caused a huge overall rank rise back to 33k after half of the season!

This time, only 5 out of 11 of our players delivered, but fortunately their returns were really high – three players (including our captain) got exactly 15 points!

Our defence this time provided us just 14 points, averaging 3.5 points per player. AWB was the only one to get a clean sheet – that allowed him to get 2 bonus points too. Fabianski got 3 points thanks to his saves.

Up front, we’ve had 4 players with offensive returns. Hazard, Pogba and Felipe got exactly 15 points, while Kane got 6 points. Fortunately we have captained Pogba, not Sterling who was the only one in our midfield to not get any offensive returns.

The rest of our squad didn’t perform but we didn’t expect anything more than 2 points from Wilson. Shame that Doherty & Laporte couldn’t keep clean sheets in quite easy games. We are also disappointed that Trippier was rested as Walker-Pieters (who has played instead of Trippier) got 3 asssists and a clean sheet.

We have made only one transfer last week – Pogba for Bernardo Silva. Even though Bernardo has scored, our transfer has paid off as Pogba got 15 points and was our captain instead of Sterling. We haven’t used our second free transfer.

Gameweek 20 team

This week, we don’t have any difficult choices to make. Our team is as shown above for now and we haven’t done any transfers yet (we have 2 free transfers to use this week once again). We will wait with regards to transfers though, as some players might be tired from playing every few days so we’d like to have full information from the managers before acting.

Sterling is expected to achieve the highest score among our players, so he will be the one who gets the armband. However looking at his recent performances, we are not sure whether we would like to keep him in our team. Pogba will be our vice captain in case Sterling gets rotated this time.

So far, Doherty, AWB and Hojbjerg are on the bench due to them having the lowest points potential however, we are still not sure which players will stay in the first team, as we might decide that our newly transfered player is good enough to get a place in the squad.

All in all our team looks solid, however we have some tough fixtures. We also hope that there won’t be too much rotation due to the heavy fixture schedule.

Our assists model is also included in the calculation, so our predictions should be even more precise. This enhances the appeal of players like Robertson or Doherty, as their assist potential is good for a defender.

Once we know more (from press conferences and other reliable sources) we can decide our moves. I will provide an update on my Twitter account once we’ve decided.

According to our calculations, our team should get at least 64.99 points, but that’s not including some factors (like saves or bonus points, but also not including cards and some other factors like penalties saved/missed). This is a nice predicted score but we hope that our result will be even higher as it was last week.

All the data used for calculations were taken from: oddschecker.com; if some odds were not provided, then data was taken from WilliamHill.com

Line-ups were mostly based on previous GWs line ups (slightly adjusted for suspensions and injuries).

If you want to get in touch with our data analyst or you have any further questions about this article or the tool, then please follow Piotr on Twitter here >>https://twitter.com/TheFPL_Analyst