Fantasy managers are always looking out for any indicators of a player’s future success. Some, like increased game time or a team’s new attacking philosophy make total sense. Others such as a player’s performance in a single Gameweek or past success against any given opponent are a bit of a stretch. The final category is filled with hunches, feelings and long shots, often fuelled by adult beverages, and usually leading to ill-advised Friday night transfer binges.
One way of predicting goals is to look at the amount of opportunities a player is receiving, and what he’s doing with them. For anyone who has even casually glanced at a game of football (never mind hardened Fantasy managers like yourself), that sounds obvious but it’s a factor which is consistently ignored in favour of ‘form’ and the fact a player had a ‘big’ game the previous week, even if his lone goal came about somewhat fortuitously.
Taking last year‘s data (for forwards only), we see a correlation of around 88% when comparing total shots to goals scored (excluding penalties) and 90% when comparing only shots on target. This can be used as a predictive tool as players who are getting chances, but not putting them away will, on average, start to improve over time assuming they continue to receive the same opportunities in the future.
There are two careful, and important, distinctions to be made though.
12 years, 3 months agoI've read some of Chris' articles on his PL Fantasy site and I have to say this one is up to the usual standard - very incisive and cuts through quite a few vague and murky perceptions. You can disagree with stats, and there is never certainty in them, but at least if someone shows you his method like he has, and shows you exactly how he came to his conclusions, you can understand them and maybe even improve his method.
I think the shots on target converted percentage (average 1 out of 2.9) is a pretty strong stat over the long-term and these predictions about who will do better and worst are extremely relevant at this time...
Big point: Rooney and RVP aren't on the "big improvers" or "big fallers" tables. That means they should pretty much keep scoring at the current rate - if you're happy with that, keep/bring them in.