Fantasy Football The FF247 Community Team
Two seasons ago Cookie put out a call for new ideas for the Fantasy Football 247 site. I saw the request before leaving for work and whilst driving I kept thinking how we could have a Community team run by the people who frequent the site. One question kept coming back to me; if you get the median answers of a fantasy football community, would it lead to a successful fantasy football team?
After discussing it with the FF247 team we decided it would be too hard (logistically) to run that season and it went on the back burner. At the start of this season we decided it might be doable but we were still unsure of the logistics. Thankfully the offer of help came from two seasoned FF players, namely The Gallant Pioneer and Elleffcee and between the three of us we managed to iron out the problems.
The original version was using typed votes on the FF247 site and Twitter which was arduous but manageable. GP then took the bull by the horns and moved us onto Strawpoll and then on to the much more streamline Survey Monkey which has made calculations far more manageable thanks to the Scotsman’s initial time setting it up. At this point we’d like to say a massive thank you to GP for the time he has put into reinvigorating the voting for the Community Team. In all honesty he has been the driving force for it this season. To quote Init ‘Many thanks GP, massive effort running this, especially with them two stooges helping you’. I shall be having words with you later young man and not just about your grammar!
On average we get around 55-60 votes for transfers, captains picks and who to bench. Next season we will be tracking this more closely as it will make interesting reading for the end of season article.
So how did the team perform I hear you cry? Well, we finished with a very respectable rank of 100,193. Here are some more detailed stats taken from the excellent FPL Statistico site (http://www.anewpla.net/fpl). If you would like to see more detail of the Community Team our FPL code is: 586387.
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Transfers
Total Transfers : 43
Total Points Hits : 32
Total Auto Subs : 13
Total Auto Subs Points : 15
Total Immediate Points Gained from Transfers : 181
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Formation
3-4-3 (30 times – average 55.5 points)
4-3-3 (3 times – average 61.7 points)
4-4-2 (3 times – average 40.3 points)
5-5-3 (1 times – average 154 points)
2-5-3 (1 times – average 61 points)
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Ranking
Highest Gameweek Score : 154
Lowest Gameweek Score : 31
Median Gameweek Score : 55
Highest Gameweek Rank : 48520
Lowest Gameweek Rank : 3223249
Average Gameweek Rank : 1201913
Median Gameweek Rank : 1105410
Total FPL Users : 3734001
In Top x% of All Users : 2.68%
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Captaincy,
Total Captain Points:,466
Total Captain Points as % of Overall Score:,21.64%
Total Vice-Captain Points:,208
Possible Captain Points if you Always used your Vice-Captain instead:,416
Possible Captain Points if you Always Captained Highest Gameweek Scorer:,1014
Total Actual Captain Points as % of Highest Possible Captain Points:,45.96%
Difference Between your Captain Points and Highest Possible:,-548
Possible Total Points if you Always Captained Highest Scorer out of (C) and (VC):,2214
Difference Between your Total Points and the Above Number:,-61
Possible Total Points if you Always Captained Highest Scorer:,2421
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Captains Used
Agüero (14 times – 162 points – average 11.6 points)
Lukaku (5 times – 64 points – average 12.8 points)
De Bruyne (4 times – 54 points – average 13.5 points)
Vardy (3 times – 24 points – average 8 points)
Kane (3 times – 40 points – average 13.3 points)
Sánchez (2 times – 56 points – average 28 points)
Payet (2 times – 40 points – average 20 points)
Özil (1 times – 4 points – average 4 points)
Pellè (1 times – 4 points – average 4 points)
Hazard (1 times – 4 points – average 4 points)
Giroud (1 times – 10 points – average 10 points)
Costa (1 times – 4 points – average 4 points)
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Points Difference to:
Rank 1 : -305
Rank 101 : -228
Rank 501 : -194
Rank 999 : -177
Rank 4996 : -130
Rank 9999 : -106
Rank 24995 : -70
Rank 49961 : -38
Rank 99979 : 0
Rank 249878 : 62
Rank 499909 : 124
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Benching Stats
Played:
Goals – 107
Assists – 66
Clean Sheets – 53
Own Goals – 2
Red Cards – 0
Yellow Cards – 42
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Benched:
Goals – 2
Assists – 2
Clean Sheets – 8
Own Goals – 0
Red Cards – 1
Yellow Cards – 10
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So what does that all mean?
The interesting facts are the variables that, as a community we control, so captain and benching transfers are harder to summarise:
We picked the highest scorer in our team as captain 45% of the time.
We benched two goals out of a total of 109.
We benched two assists out of a total of 68.
We benched eight clean sheets out of a total of 61.
And how well did we do?
Median Gameweek Score : 55
In Top x% of All Users : 2.68%
So the sun has set on one of the most amazing of Premier League seasons we are likely to see; the Fabulous Foxes wop the league by 10 points, LVG brought a new level of dullness to football and Spurs somehow manage to finish below Arsenal again.
As for the FF247 Community Team well you made it what is is. A massive thank you! We want this to carry on and go from strength to strength. For that to happen we need your help; spread the word and keep voting. We at FF247 are very proud of the fact this is the first community based FPL team and others have since followed our lead. As is said, “imitation is the the sincerest form of flattery.” We nearly finished in the top 100K (our points total was enough it was just the amount of hits that stopped us reaching it). So close to the holy grail of FPL in our first season!
So in answer to the original question; would the median answers from a fantasy football community lead to a successful fantasy football team? Abso-bloody-lutely!
Finally, we’d love some feedback from the community so if you’d like to leave feedback please comment below. To help us answering some/all of the questions would be great:
When you didn’t vote, why was this: Did you forget? Was it not posted enough?
Did you know you can find us in “Hot Comments”?
How is Survey Monkey for you to use?
Do you follow us on Twitter? If so do you retweet for us and if not would you consider it?
Anything else you’d like us to do differently?
Thanks again guys, see you all next season!
Thanks, GP/NZ/ELLE
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Afternoon all and it’s back to FPL on the article front as GP, NZ Alex and Elle run us through the season’s stats on your Community Team.
At this juncture, we’d like to say a massive thank you to the 3 stooges (!) for managing the team and for their work behind the scenes in making sure it ran smoothly. Well done and thanks lads.
The 3 stooges well to answer your ?s
Smashed
the only thing when using the Monkey was if the player you picked wasn’t there it didn’t give you a chance to see who was in the running other than that easy to use.
No
One thing we could look at is the timings we couldn’t afford some players because they had gone up by the time we had voted I know this would be difficult but maybe worth considering. I’ll think of some things later.
Big thank you to the 3 of you GP,NZ & Elle for running this , gave us good banter , I know a lot of work went into this and its much appreciated especially GP for all your efforts look forward to nk yr. 😉
“Smashed”
He’s our demographic is our Silvers
The thanks for this article go to Mr NZ Alex, who kindly volunteered to do it and I think he’s done a great job so thanks mate.
Happy to hear all and take as much on board as we can for next season. One thing for me is the use of the chips – if we get the chips again like we did this season we may be asking you every week to vote for their use as seems the only fair way to do it. I hope the additional few clicks each week won’t put any of you off.
Right lads, let’s hear your thoughts please . . .
Thanks GP, although the big effort during the season came from you. I was just a stooge with an idea!
Well done NZ, cracker of an article to finish the season. GP great effort over the season mate, cheers.
One thing we could change is, instead of putting GP/NZ/ELLE, we could sign off with LARRY/CURLY/MOE. :big-lol:
Didn’t vote because I was either too busy or I forgot.
Yeah I know the hot comments could
The times I managed to get online to vote I had no problems with Monkey.
Not on Twitter so can’t follow or retweet.
Oh and just another big thanks to ye boys for doing this it was really cool experiment that I think worked.
Matt
Thank you for the feedback.
Get on Twitter! I wasted four hours today …
Haha might need to in order to kill some summer boredom!!
You’re not missing much Matt. It’s basically full of idiots but if you can filter those out then there’s some great resources on there. You can organise things by lists so say you need MLS or CL specific stuff then your trusted handles are all in one place at the click of a button. For second by second news it’s unbeatable if you use it correctly. If you need a break from Raz it’s good too
Mitro is there but with less RMT’s strangely. He will basically just ask you if you have any free mugs on a daily basis 
The MLS lads are all on there too from the podcast etc. They’re a good laugh.
Sounds good Init. Might set it up tomorrow so and have a poke around the site and try get used to it. Will probably be asking for all the twitter names tomorrow then haha
Oh it’s not a ‘site’, it’s a world. It’s like a different planet. You’ll be fine. We did a twitter corner on here once so if you can find that article (I think it’s on one of the tabs at the top, if not then just search for those words) then that’s got most of the people on it that you know. Failing that just find the site handle and view our lists.
Cheers Init will do.
Good stuff lads, many thanks for all the effort throughout the season and to all for achieving a respectable rank in a very unpredictable season of FPL. Hopefully we can smash that rank next season though :thumbup:
When you didn’t vote, why was this: Did you forget? Was it not posted enough? – I think there was enough posts about it, the times i missed the votes (mainly second half of season) was due to work.
Did you know you can find us in “Hot Comments”? – Yep.
How is Survey Monkey for you to use? – Very good actually. It’s easy to use and quick too.
Do you follow us on Twitter? If so do you retweet for us and if not would you consider it? – Nope, i ain’t twitter folk.
Anything else you’d like us to do differently? Not really, i thought it was run well. Only thing i would say would be to the voters; especially early in the season i noticed a trend of sorts where people were voting in the same transfers they planned for their own team, rather than what may have been more beneficial to the community team. Hope that makes sense. In the 2nd half it got a lot better i think but early season mental transfers (in relation to the squad at the time) hurt that rank badly.
Cheers again lads. I’ll try to not miss as many next season, 2nd half of the season i missed a lot.
NIN
I think people naturally will apply their own gut feeling or research to our transfers. That might be unavoidable as we all back our own judgement usually don’t we?
Thanks for your answers my friend.
Yeah true. What i was getting at though was voting a move in even if it wasn’t the best for the team. For example how long was the defence in tatters in the first half of the season? Yet every week the transfers were based elsewhere, basically leaving four or five real issues alone for weeks and weeks whilst jumping the flavor of the month. Just something to keep in mind for the voters next season i think. Forget your own team and do the best for the community team.
Great stuff though lads, cheers again.
The only way you can avoid that is for the committee to pre isolate the transfer for the week and say it has decided it’s a defensive one only given the situation presented? Difficult to do that if the obvious thing elsewhere is to bring in a hot commodity up front for example. Even though the sensible thing may be to sort the defence.
That’s an idea that could work yeah. I can understand bringing in a Payet or whatever if he’s kicking ass and leaving a dodgy defender in the team but so many weeks last season there were major issues, not just one player either, yet they were ignored. The team basically had no defence for months so all the Payet’s and Mahrez’s weren’t helping
NiN
I agree with you that our defence was neglected, no doubt about that but we are very wary about cajoling the Community’s voting.
The management at times had to interpret voting in the event of a tie vote or a budgetary constraint but it is always based upon the number of votes and the popular choice was always accommodated on the pure principle of us setting up to represent the common feeling of you guys.
Almost weekly in the first half of the season we always had a comment here or on twitter specifically referencing how bad our defence was! We as management, hoped this would be realised by the majority so that a defensive transfer carried but as you rightly mentioned – we usually landed with ‘another’ midfielder or striker.
If we start to run the team based on what we think then it is just another doubles (or in our case triples) team and we don’t want that.
One thing I forgot to say in the article was the drive was by the beautiful Waikato river and now everttlme I drive past a certain part of the river, it reminds me of Cookie, GP and Elle. I have to drive past it twice a day, I’ll probably need councilling soon!
Anyhow thanks for the feedback so far and keep it coming.
I’d find a different route if I were you, Kiwi 😉
It would mean an extra 30 minutes in the journey. To be fair, it’s probably worth it!
Funny that I think about Elle and Rich every time I drive past a river too #leadboots