Captain Picks Gameweek 17 FPL Fantasy Premier League

With a plethora of attacking talent on show in the Barclays Premier League as of late, we are going to analyse our Captain’s Picks decisions based upon multiple values – these are the attacking effectiveness of their team, the defensive effectiveness of their opposition and the attacking players own shooting data.

Throughout this article graphs are used to help show the principles behind our Captain’s Picks. We have described in detail how the values shown in these graphs are calculated in the previous week’s article, but they can also be found at the bottom of this article for reference.

A new feature this week is the colour coding of the different teams and players. For the attacking graphs we have used Green for the most amount of goals scored, Red being the least amount and a gradient is used in-between for varying values. On the defensive graph we have used Red for the most amount of goals conceded, with Green being the least amount and the gradient is the same with values in between changing.

Data used in the following graphs is from the last 6 game-weeks to keep up with current form.

Our Captain’s Picks for this week are –

Luis Suarez: 10 goals and 8 assists in his last 6 matches. Need we say more?

Jay Rodriguez: 3 goals in the last 6, with a good amount of shots.

Romelu Lukaku: 3 goals and 3 assists, whilst Everton are impressing of late.

Alvaro Negredo: 4 goals and 1 assist in his last 6 games. Whilst playing second fiddle to Aguero, he is showing impressive stats.

Theo Walcott: 2 goals and 2 assists, all within 150 minutes since his return from injury.

Wayne Rooney: The main man at United, takes set pieces and has 4 goals and 4 assists in his last 6 games played.

We will look to give you an insight in to why we have chosen the aforementioned players that will help you make up your mind, if indeed it hasn’t been already by Suarez’s performance against Tottenham!

Attacking effectiveness

Liverpool continue to lead by a large margin, roughly a goal on average every 6 shots and taking an average of 22 shots per match. Manchester City, Everton, and Chelsea are all hanging in there, however a varying amount of goals scored from the 3 teams is apparent from the varying colours. Arsenal fall behind in terms of average shots per match towards the likes of Manchester United.

Defensive effectiveness

A worrying graph for Tottenham fans, yet Crystal Palace supporters can stand proud at the defensive effectiveness of their team over recent weeks. Although facing the fewest average shots per match, Chelsea are also conceding from a low average amount of shots faced per match. The recent 6-3 defeat has caused Arsenal to drop significantly but they are still facing a low average amount of shots per game. Everton, Manchester United, and Newcastle are all performing well.

Team against opposition

The above chart shows the chance a team may have at scoring against their opposition for GW17. Arsenal and Southampton both appear to have a chance of a goal or two with near double the amount of shots per match to their opponent’s average shots faced per goal conceded. Liverpool, Manchester City, Everton, and Chelsea all look to be in with a chance of scoring numerous goals this weekend based on the recent defensive effectiveness of their opposition. West Brom and Tottenham stand as outside options but this will be explained further below. Manchester United’s data doesn’t really suggest we should be looking at them, but realistically we have to for one reason – Wayne Rooney.

Player against opposition

By plotting a players average shots per match against their opposition’s defensive effectiveness, we get a general view of how they may perform. We have chosen the players in the graph based on how their team suggested they’d perform in the previous graph. Holtby has been left out of our captain’s picks, although shown here for comparison, as Tottenham’s data shows they should be scoring a lot more than they have. Holtby has only played 4 times in the last 6 games but is the most effective player shot’s wise for Tottenham, they are certainly struggling and we don’t deem Holtby suitable for our choices. Shane long is a different story, both his and West Brom’s attacking data is favourable but as the Baggies have parted company with Steve Clarke we have opted to choose Walcott over both him and Holtby. Walcott’s data seems unfavourable with an average shots per match value of roughly 1. A limitation of these graphs is that they do not take into consideration the minutes played for each player, Walcott has played 5 games in the last 6, though 4 of them being below 25 minutes game time. Note should be made that he got an assist in the 1 minute he appeared against Cardiff! Hazard is also a reasonable choice, yet we feel he is up against a defensively sound Arsenal side and is away from home. Despite the 6 goals Arsenal let in against Manchester City we feel they are still one of the most defensively effective teams in the league at this current time. As previously mentioned, Wayne Rooney’s data doesn’t suggest he is a better option than any of the others, nevertheless he continues to perform well in terms of fantasy points each week.

Summary

Luis Suarez: although our graphs do not show the quality of the shots each player or team are taking, a frightening stat is that the shot accuracy of Suarez sits at 65%. Not only does he take double the average amount of shots per game to that of our other picks, he gets them on target as opposed to taking wildly audacious attempts (although he has, but scored). However, being in a fixture against the most defensively effective opposition of our picks is apparently the only downfall we can find.

Jay Rodriguez: not only is Rodriguez in a favourable match up against Tottenham, he is taking an average amount of shots similar to that of a common choice of ours, Lukaku. He has found the back of the net 3 times in the last six weeks, while the departure of Andre Villas-Boas will only help the confidence of Southampton and they will welcome the fact that Spurs have conceded 16 goals in their last 6 matches. The Saints will be looking to use this game as a springboard back in to form after a tough few games in recent weeks.

Romelu Lukaku: a frustrating pick for a lot of fantasy premier league managers as of late! Regardless, with 3 goals and 3 assists in the last five games he hasn’t exactly been quiet. A number of square ball opportunities at the weekend would have seen Lukaku flying high going in to GW17, but the determination of his team-mates to get amongst the goals led to 3 straight games with just an assist in each to his name. Swansea have conceded 6 goals in the last 6 games and if any chances come Lukaku’s way we expect him to put them in the back of the net after a 3 game drought. We still expect his average shots per match to increase if his team-mates give him the ball in front of goal.

Alvaro Negredo: an option that many have taken on as a replacement for Aguero. With 3 goals and an assist to his name in the last six games, we’re tipping Negredo to feature in the points regularly with Aguero out. With the beast without his beauty for the foreseeable future, Negredo will be looking to make a statement going into a fixture against Fulham who have conceded 15 goals in the last 6 matches.

Theo Walcott: the data for Walcott is a bit misleading, showing him averaging only around 1 shot every match. However, just returning from injury he has played only 153 minutes over the course of 5 matches and has still managed 2 goals and 2 assists. When Mesut Ozil made his debut for Arsenal earlier this season Walcott’s chances per game increased significantly, although he didn’t score in this period. Upon his return he has shown exactly how he can make an impact for Arsenal. A fixture at home against Chelsea is actually one of the most favourable of our picks, Chelsea having conceded 10 goals and an average of conceding a goal every 6 shots faced these past 6 matches. Walcott will fancy his chances on his return to the Emirates.

Wayne Rooney: the data we have provided doesn’t necessarily suggest that Rooney has a better chance of scoring than any of the other options presented, despite this he is generally involved in most of United’s attacks. West Ham aren’t the best defensively and have conceded 11 goals in the last 6 games, but a combination of Manchester United having a low average shots per match value, and West Ham conceding on an average shots faced value that is higher than our other options makes Rooney our least favourable pick, statistically at least. This might not be the case in reality though, as Rooney takes nearly all the-set pieces  and has the quality to deliver when he deems necessary.

We hope that the graphs in this article may have helped your decision as to who to captain this weekend.

Worthy mentions that could be considered although not included in this article are; Loic Remy, Eden Hazard, Aaron Ramsey, Yaya Toure, Philippe Coutinho, and Yohan Cabaye.

Following this analysis of our Captain’s Picks for GW17, we would love to hear your views below on who you are going for and why. Will it be any of our choices or someone different? Don’t forget to cast your vote on our Captain’s Poll below.

Good luck to you all this game-week, flingy (Sean).

Calculations

Average shots per match = total shots / games played

Average shots per goal scored = total shots / goals scored

Average shots faced per match = total shots against / games played

Average shots faced per goal conceded = total shots against / goals conceded

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