I’ve put together a simple new way of looking at the Fantasy Premier League’s (FPL) Bonus Point System (BPS), which is used to calculate players’ bonus points. Called Baseline BPS, the aim of this new way of looking at the scoring system is to better understand why some players are excelling and some falling short when bonus points are awarded.
Baseline BPS Explained
“What is it?” I here you cry. Baseline BPS is simply a player’s BPS score with all the obvious stuff (that’s already rewarded directly) stripped out. For instance, if in a given game a defender keeps a clean sheet, scores a goal, and recieves a BPS score of 12, his Baseline BPS would have been 4, which is derived from;
12, minus 4 BPS for a goal, minus 4 BPS for a clean sheet.
The idea is that you can see what kind of BPS score a player is getting independently of the stuff we already look for, and thereby get a hint of who is going to pick up bonus points with all things being equal.
Methodology
Here’s what I’ve done:
1. Count how many games a player has played 60 mins or over in (shorter appearances are likely to give skewed BPS figures)
2. Count up their total BPS earned over those games
3. Deduct the total BPS scored that would have originated from goals (8/6/4 for strikers/mids/defenders), assists (3 for all positions) and clean sheets (4 for defenders)
4. Add back on any easy-to-calculate negative BPS (yellow cards, OGs, missed penalties)
5. Divide by the number of games played
Example
Let’s take Alexander Kolorov as an example:
1. Played 20 games over 60 mins
2. Totalled 151 BPS in those games
3. Got 1 goal (-4), 8 assists (-24) and 8 clean sheets (-32) in those games
4. Got 2 yellow cards in those games (+2)
5. A net BPS of 93 divided by 20 gives a healthy Baseline BPS of 4.7
Results
Baseline BPS values per game are given below for a selection of players
Forwards
2.7 – Rooney
1.6 – Sturridge
1.2 – Suarez
1.1 – Lukaku
0.8 – Giroud
0.7 – Aguero
Midfielders
4.9 – Yaya
4.9 – Silva
4.9 – Gerrard
4.6 – Cazorla
4.2 – Ramsey
3.8 – Erikson
3.6 – Ozil
3.3 – Lallana
3.1 – Hazard
2.6 – Sessegnon
2.2 – Walcott
Defenders
5.5 – Mertersacker
5.3 – Jagielka
5.1 – Koscielny
4.8 – Distin
4.8 – Terry
4.7 – Demichalis
4.7 – Kolorov
4.4 – Chico
4.2 – Walker
4.0 – Coleman
3.9 – Ivanovic
3.5 – Ward
3.4 – B Turner
3.0 – Olsson
Conclusions
- Centre-backs probably score around one BPS higher than full-backs on average. Not a huge amount, but enough to swing the bonus point allocation.
- Strikers are totally reliant on their 8 BPS per goal to get bonus. Anything less than a value of 2 means they are actually losing BPS as the game goes on.
- Wingers also score pretty poorly, probably due to losses of possession.
- All-action midfielders do almost as well as centre-backs, probably for similar reasons
- Players from better teams seems to score slightly better than equivalent players from worse teams (pass completion maybe?)
- The individual results from Arsenal are a little surprising.
I’ve compared these scores against ones for the same players that I did last year (where available), and they generally fall within about 15 % of last year’s totals, which suggests that they are likely to be pretty constant from year to year.
If anyone would like to add some more figures for players that I haven’t listed, I’d love to see them.
9 years, 11 months agoIs that a picture of B&B?