Predicting Penalties - Best FPL Tips, Advice, Team News, Picks, and Statistics from Fantasy Football Scout

This article takes a look at whether penalties can be predicted by looking ahead and identifying when penalty takers would be likeliest to get the chance to take a spot kick. I worked out a simple system that allowed the season ticker to usefully visualise the penalties scored/conceded data for both home and away fixtures (+ or – 100 per penalty). This just gave me a quick overview of the obvious patterns and flashpoints.

What I’m looking for are two things:

1. A team that wins a lot of penalties going on a run against teams that concede a lot

2. One-off flashpoints where the team that wins the most penalties faces the team that concedes the most (differentiating for home/away stats)

Individual Gameweeks

Once I had the ticker done it was easy to spot the flashpoints for each game week and I calculated the two most likely to serve up a penalty award (by simply adding penalties scored to penalties conceded for each match-up). I’ve supplied the first and second place results

GW8 Aguero , Gomis
GW 9 Aguero, Berahino
GW 10 Mahrez , Ritchie
GW 11 Lukaku, Aguero
GW 12 Cazorla, Mata
GW 13 Hazard, Henderson
GW 14 Noble, Mahrez
GW 15 Aguero, Cazorla
GW16 Henderson, Mahrez
GW17 Hazard, Cabaye
GW18 Aguero, Cabaye
GW19 Cazorla, Berahino

Mid Term Acquisitions

What follows are runs of games where the chance of a penalty is high for the named team:

MCY: GW 8-11
LEI: GW 10-12
MUN: GW 10-16
CHE: GW 12-17
CPL: GW 17-18

In the immediate, Sergio Aguero appears highly likely to get at least one spot-kick in the next four games. Chelsea’s penalty record (5H, 0A) offers promise for Hazard owners as Chelsea embark on a run of three home games in four, but I would urge caution before Gameweek 12 as the teams they face haven’t given much away. If Southampton can improve on their poor return of three spot-kicks in 45 then Dusan Tadic could be your man from GW9-12.

Long Term Acquisitions

Looking at the run through to Christmas, Saido Berahino is comfortably the best low-price prospect for spot-kicks. West Brom come into an extended run of home games against teams with a habit of conceding penalties (SUN, TOT, LEI, BOU, NEW) and have demonstrated they can win them both home (4) and away (3). Palace and Swansea also face a great run of teams with a habit of conceding but both come with caveats, the former is a relatively poor home spot-kick record (1H, 6A) and corresponding fixtures (7H, 5A) and latter a very poor 2014/15 spot-kick record, both home and away (1H, 1A). With two penalties served up already this season and TOT up next there is some hope for Gomis owners. There is not much to choose between Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City in the long term. Manchester United’s prospects appear average though with new life in the forward line they could improve. Hope this little insight is useful in some way.

Data range (dates): 2014/15 season – present
Data: Click here.
Assumptions: Form (2014-present)

J0E

8 years, 6 months ago

Thanks for this Really good insight.

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Tshelby

Darmain/Targett -> Dawson/Bertrand

All ready got Richards, Bellerin and Kolarov

Is this to much on defence?

Community article comments are usually focused on the issue in the article itself. If you have a general question please use the comments on the main article. Cheers.

Eden Hazardous
8 years, 6 months ago
🙂
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Tshelby
8 years, 6 months ago
Oh sorry, didn't know!

Great article btw
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Eden Hazardous

Great research! Seeing Cazorla many a times in this 🙂

La Vida Latte

Nice one! One thing I used to look at with penalties is which officials award most penalties. Could that be a part of the penalty ticker too? How long before a game are the officials appointed?

Pacer.
8 years, 6 months ago
Sure, it could definitely be far more complex, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible really because I was really just looking for big, obvious pluses to take into account when considering one player against another. The ticker isn't necessary as such, it just provided a convenient way to visualise it. Obviously there's a lot to take into account re. changes in form, management, tactics, personnel etc, but it's a starting point.
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the Penman

This is great, a good individual article to stand out from the rest.

We used to have a regular series looking at the refs, and whether they were card- & penalty-happy or not - Any chance of that making a reappearance?

Pacer.

If one oversight could be edit in:

"There is not much to choose between Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City in the long term"

should read

"For the big hitters, in the long-term Manchester City look the best shout with the highest number of home awards (6) and corresponding fixtures (7H, 5A). There is not much to choose between Arsenal and Chelsea

ta"

Jaws

The most vital question can not be answered: who is the referee?

Aseel

Great article! Thanks

GHB

Great article. Really interesting to see how accurate this potentially could be over next 6-8 weeks

HVT

This is very good work and terrific analysis.
Thanks TM for your endeavours.

Cheers, here's a quick look of week one (GW8)

reminder: article predictions were based solely on match ups of home and away, won and conceded stats

While neither of the predicted teams (City, Swansea) were awarded a penalty there were some signs the previous penalty stats could prove useful

1. Palace. The ticker predicted them as having the second best run through to Christmas and they were awarded a home penalty. Only their poor home form (relative to away) prevented Cabaye making the GW8 prediction

2. That penalty was conceded by West Brom, identified as prime candidates to concede away from home (5 away pens in ~ 22 away games)

3. Spurs hapless away fortunes (C6 pens) in their own penalty area continued with a Kane own goal. Watch this space for calamities

until next week x

ihateramsey2

The "Predicting Penalties" topic made me realize that Aguero is essential..

Ginkapo FPL

I am extremely skeptical that this system works.

What I would absolutely love is a follow up article in GW20 where you can prove me wrong!

Pacer.
8 years, 6 months ago
Hi Ginkapo,

I plan to summarise the results weekly in this feed and then provide an overall summary at the halfway stage (GW19). I will take a look at the game-week predictions success and a look at whether the mid-term and long-term recommendation averages compare favorably with the whole data range averages (pens/game).

There's allsorts of reasons to be skeptical regarding both the assumptions made (maintenance of form, personnel, tactics etc) and the results we'll get (sample size etc). It will still be interesting to look in detail at the results because often trying to understand failure will shed light on some unexpected understanding.
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Penalties so far:

GW 9: Cabaye, Vardy
GW 10: Cabaye, Bojan

GW10: Neither of the two teams predicted as most likely to win a penalty did so this week.

Palace, who were predicted as 2nd overall for the period GW9-GW18 (with the caveat that their home record was poor relative to away: H1, A6) continued their turnaround of home form with a 2nd penalty award in as many games in this period. Wilfred Zaha has now won or been heavily involved in 3 or their last four penalty awards. Zaha and Boalasie have won or played a major role in over half of CRY awards since the start of the 2014 season. Their presence appears to be a good sign for midfielder Yohan Cabaye's chances or further awards, though with Pardew's penchant for benching/withdrawing Zaha and Boalasie's poor form this year, nothing is certain there.