Avoiding the urge to pick over the corpse of last night’s England performance is difficult. You’ll read and hear enough on that today without digesting more of it here. Instead, with the McDonalds/FIFA game shifting their rules to coincide with last night’s game, I’ve dived into the statistics to see if I can fathom the lay of the land.
The most startling fact that hits you when you start looking at the Fantasy scoring from last night is that the bonus point allocation is significantly higher than expected. The McDonalds/FIFA game saw fit to hand out no less than 50 bonus points to both sides – for a 0-0 draw that is surely bordering on ridiculous. All in all there were 29 defensive bonus points awarded with Algeria’s Madjid Bougherra picking up a total of 6 – the highest we’ve seen in the entire tournament. Equally surprising is that David James weighed in with 5 – gathered from clearances made on the night. The sheer number of defensive points awarded suggests that not only has the McDonalds game seen a change with attacking bonus, there may also have been a tweak made to the criteria for defensive points…
Maybe not though. Taking a closer look at the FIFA stats for the game, Bougherra does indeed show 3 tackles won and 3 clearances – stats that should indeed earn him a total of 6 defensive bonus. Similarly James made 5 clearances for England. Things look in order then – and perhaps from a 0-0 draw substantial defensive bonus is to be expected.
Let’s take a look at the attacking bonus though. As you will have read, the game organisers have redefined the allocation of attacking bonus to 1 point “for every 2 solo runs” having previously stated that a bonus point would be given “every 2 balls delivered into the penalty area”.
Looking at the statistics from last night’s England game once again we can see a total of 21 attacking bonus points dished out. A very surprising total given that there were no goals on show and generally very few clear cut chances created. Frank Lampard leads the way for England with 3 attacking bonus and yet FIFA’s stats show that Frank made a total of 5 “Delivery/Solo Runs” into the penalty and final third. My maths said that, if all five were solo runs, that would give Lampard just 2 points. Similarly Aaron Lennon came out of the game with 2 attacking bonus and yet the FIFA stats show that he made just two “Delivery/Solo Runs” into the penalty area and the attacking third. Again this doesn’t add up according to the new rules first published last night.
It’s all very unclear then. At first glance the attacking bonus handed out last night looks way off beam with both the result and the published official FIFA stats. It doesn’t look as though “solo runs” alone are contributing to attacking points, despite what the rule change states. Passes into the box may still be a factor then, although again, the FIFA stats fail to marry up even when these are taken into account.
Just like England then, it’s all a bit of mess of uncertainty. Unlike England we’re still getting results. The Fantasy Football Scout league currently sits proudly on top of the league of leagues. It’s just a shame none of us really know how we can best go about staying there. Over to ISM and FIFA.