FPL INSIGHT

FPL (over)enthusiast Zain shares 3 of his favourite FPL related websites and briefly outlines how to effectively use them.

1. LiveFPL.net

This is the first FPL related website that I used but I’m going to say it here; it’s my favourite. I put my recent upturn in form predominately down to this website (in addition to a great deal of good luck). This absolute gem of a website enables you to plan out your transfers over the next few weeks based on a season ticker (a fixture list sorted by the difficulty of a team’s fixtures over a changeable number of gameweeks: see above on the right) among other things however, the function that I particularly like about the site is the live rank viewer which summarises how your gameweek is going/has gone informing you of your live rank when autosubs are made, the impact of your differentials, the EO (expected ownership) of the players in your team compared to the Top 10K of FPL managers as well as those managers at around the same rank as you (helping you decide whether to protect your rank or play more aggressively with higher risk for greater rank swing reward) and the impact of certain players on the colour and magnitude of your gameweek arrow. Just saying all that has made me tired!

This website’s merit comes from the wide range of player data it has for a multitude of different sports but even focusing solely on football is there an abundance of data.

Scrolling down to “player standard stats” for the current Premier League season takes you to a treasure trove of data garnered over the season. The most useful perhaps is by scrolling right looking at the stats “per 90 minutes” with the most informative (well at least for forwards and midfielders and to some extent defenders) being npxG + xAG/90. Now, before you run away screaming, this scary looking stat isn’t so bad as it looks at first glance. A click on and then a quick hover over this stat causes a pop-up to appear which outlines that this stat means non-penalty expected goals and assisted goals per 90 minutes. This is a bit of a mouthful but acts as a useful composite comparison between players and between the expected and actual npxG + xAG/90 of a player to see whether they are under or over performing.

In addition to this nifty feature, another useful thing that you can do is check the “nailedness” (ie. How likely the player is to play the full 90) of a player by looking at starts and number of full 90 minutes played. This is particularly useful at the congested period located usually during Christmas or in the latter gameweeks where double gameweeks are usually situated where this data can be used to help decide on a transfer on the grounds of who is most likely to play such as that experienced a few weeks ago in small DGW 36 when trying to decide between Callum Wilson (more explosive but less nailed for minutes) and Alexander Isak (consistent returns with fairly regular starts). (In hindsight this backfired horribly for me; take a guess which one I brought in. Hint: His name was not Callum Wilson)

Sofascore.com

Finally, we have Sofascore, a website whose strengths don’t lie with a detailed array of statistics but rather with a clean and clear set of essential data which enables a quantitative viewing of the player that is more manageable than the highly quantitative methods used in FBREF.com. Some FPL managers are very data driven and enjoy pouring over sheets and sheets of statistical data while others prefer to watch the game noting impressive player performances and is known in the FPL community as the “eye test”. Personally, I believe that both need to be used in combination in order to get the best possible chance of success however if forced to pick one or the other, I’d err towards looking at statistics.

Anyway, the main benefit of Sofascore for me is the heatmap of player movement over the season as well as during each game played which can be a great guide to see which positions they tend to adopt so enabling you to have an idea of their attacking threat and can be used to find out-of-position players which can have a massive impact on one’s team (think of Lord Lundstram a few seasons back) especially at the beginning of the season. FPL websites that provide free heatmap data are few and far between so this website being able to do that makes it a really valuable and unsung tool. All in all, Sofascore provides a really solid summary of player data which can act as the final confirmation before making a transfer decision and has swiftly become a key tool in my FPL arsenal.

Now the FPL season has ended (by the time you are reading this), take stock and evaluate both the positives and mistakes made this season. This has been my first FPL season of playing properly and I have thoroughly enjoyed it as despite some pain (not having Callum Wilson, benching dilemmas and missing out on a 0.0% owned Mitoma to name but three) I have certainly seen some (rank) gain through March, Shaw and Rashford in particular all of whom have been phenomenal for my team.