Aguero’s Fantasy v Real Form

I always have a problem when Fantasy managers refer to a player being “in form” or “out of form” because they usually mean Fantasy Football or more specifically Fantasy Premier League (FPL). I don’t believe Fantasy Football  form is a very useful concept as form should be exclusively applied to how well a player is doing on the field. Sometimes this translates into Fantasy points and sometimes it doesn’t. Fantasy Football points are therefore a result of actual playing form (the player, his team and the opposition) and circumstance or luck.

In a way this is something Fantasy managers look for, isn’t it?  Players who have been playing well without hitting the headlines. Players you can bring in before they get the big points hauls rather than afterwards.

A good current example is Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero. I have seen a number of comments from Fantasy managers saying that he is out of form recently but I’m really not sure that is true. True, he hasn’t scored many Fantasy Football points or scored many goals. But that doesn’t mean he is playing badly.

In my view, the problem with Aguero isn’t form, it is position. Since Bony returned from the Africa Cup of Nations, City have returned to the 4-2-2-2 which Pellegrini seems wedded to. That means Aguero playing deeper and many of “his” usual chances have been falling to Bony/Dzeko as a result. This also happened at the same stage of last season; City played 4-2-2-2 in their last eight games (after Aguero returned from an injury) and during those eight games Dzeko scored six goals and Aguero scored two.

It is also the case that Aguero has a historic tendency to score more goals in the first half of the season than the second half if you look over the last four seasons. This could easily be coincidental but players do seem to have repeating patterns with things like this.

If you look at a strike map of Aguero’s goals this season, most have been from the 6-12 yard range and central. With 4-2-2-2 he has still been getting shots away but many more of them have been from further out and/or wider. That’s the issue. Aguero is a good player in decent form I think but although he’s well capable of scoring in any given week the overall affect of 4-2-2-2 is limiting his FPL potential. That’s my take on it anyhow.

Although it might seem counter-intuitive, I’d probably be more inclined to captain him for the Manchester derby next week than against Palace this week. Against United there is a higher chance that Pellegrini will play 4-2-3-1 with Aguero at the point (as he often does in “big” games). And Aguero has a very good scoring record against United (six goals in the last seven Premier League games). Of all Premier League opponents he has only scored more goals against West Ham than he has against United.

In conclusion, though “Fantasy form” can serve as a rough guide, it is far more useful if you can understand why a player has or has not been racking up Fantasy points. Is he playing well or badly? Has he been particularly lucky or unlucky? Or is there some other contributing factor that needs to be taken account of? Spotting changed circumstances and predicting the effects they may have has to be one of the key skills in a Fantasy manager’s arsenal.