634x258 21
Community Submissions November 27

Fixture Difficulty – Gameweeks 1-13

21 Comments
Share

This latest look at fixture difficulty assesses how much the opposition alters the performance of some of the key Fantasy Football players and in particular captaincy options. Are they scoring well in certain fixtures because they are easy, or are they are fixture-proof players who can score well whatever the opposition?

Shots In the Box Conceded

pic 1

FFScout Fixture Ranking

Fixturediff

The above attempts to answer that issue. The first image uses the aggregate shots in the box conceded for the first 13 Gameweeks by each opposition team they have faced and the second uses the Fantasy Football Scout fixture ticker ranking for the team. They are both fairly similar.

Results

The key takeaways for me are:

  • Vardy and Mahrez have indeed faced an easy start to the season. It is valid to question whether they will be able to continue that form over the next 13 weeks starting with MUN this week
  • Kane, Ighalo and Lukaku have done really well despite tough fixtures, all three have good fixtures going forward so expect their good form to continue
  • Rooney and Martial and to a lesser degree Costa and Hazard have faced tough fixtures on average, some improvement especially with CHE easier fixtures can be expected
  • Sanchez has not done that well considering his relatively easy fixtures, if he doesn’t perform over the next 3-4 probably wise to get rid.

The downside of this analysis is that the correlations between fixture difficulty and goals scored for both these set of players and the whole population is very low (statistically insignificant). You can see that Harry Kane, Odion Ighalo, Romelu Lukaku and Philippe Coutinio in particular have scored well despite harder fixtures. Sadio Mane, Bafetembi Gomis and Kevin De Bryune are the opposite way. This is worrying for people that rely primarily on fixtures to choose a captain and bring players in. As I have shown before there is a higher correlation between Shots on Target (77% this season for these players) and Expected Goals (70%) and performance than fixtures.

Lukaku

A special mention goes to Lukaku, who far from being a troll who fails to score when you expect, he has behaved more predictably. Quite simply, the easier the opposition, the more goals he scores, which could bode well away to Bournemouth this weekend.

pic 3

rakkhi Love my football, love my stats, hoping to improve each year. Go the gunners! @rakkhis on Twitter Follow them on Twitter

21 Comments Post a Comment
  1. J0E
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • Has Moderation Rights
    • 14 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    cheers. More love for Lukaku as captain.

    Open Controls
    1. Ha.
      • 8 Years
      8 years, 5 months ago

      "Quite simply, the easier the opposition the more goals he scores, which could bode well away to Bournemouth this weekend."

      Lukaku (c).

      Open Controls
      1. J0E
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • Has Moderation Rights
        • 14 Years
        8 years, 5 months ago

        The only issue is how easy we think Bournemouth are now. Over the last three - since a change of formation and personnel they are less of a push over - see Limpar's hot topic.

        But having said that I think any defence, even one that has got better will struggle to contain Lukaku or Kane in their current form.

        Open Controls
        1. Diva
          • 9 Years
          8 years, 5 months ago

          Limpar's point is slightly misleading. The only home game in which Bournemouth were terrible this season was the one against Tottenham.

          Open Controls
  2. Bolivian Seaman
    • 13 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Really good. I like that you added the statistically insignificant part, because I would have liked to see projections for future gameweeks, but I'd still think it be worthwhile. I've noticed Mane hasn't scored in easy fixtures but scored in the hard fixtures he's played in, strange

    Open Controls
    1. J0E
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 14 Years
      8 years, 5 months ago

      If I owned Mane I'd play him against a Kompany less Man City without hesitation. Betcha lots will bench him though.

      Open Controls
      1. Guy Demel's SH
        • 11 Years
        8 years, 5 months ago

        I'm thinking this over at the moment, only way I think I can fit him in is to play my AoA chip!

        Open Controls
  3. Jomica
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Nice analysis, would be interesting to see if giroud is scoring when he should this season
    Got 3 plum fixtures coming up.....

    Open Controls
  4. DaisyDaisyDaisyDaisy
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Bournemouth are missing their key centre half and have old man Distin in there. They also have a fairly fresh pairing since Francis has been full back a lot. I guess they will both know each other pretty well from when Distin was at Everton - I think that's a plus for Lukaku as well. All roads lead to him (C) for me...

    Open Controls
  5. The_Socca_Philosopha
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Nice article! Looks like Lukaku(c) it is

    Open Controls
  6. tm245
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    This is awesome, and does a great job of crystallizing what I was hoping to do in the second part of my Captaincy article. It is a really helpful tool for thinking about how predictable or mercurial certain players have been. Cheers.

    Open Controls
  7. JFP
    • 8 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    I'm hoping my Ighalo captaincy will come up this week with everyone else going for Lukaku. Villa are shocking at the moment so fingers crossed!

    Open Controls
  8. Jose's Magic Omelette
    • 10 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Really nice article Rakkhi, thanks!

    The takeaway point here goes against the common wisdom you find in most of the comments below articles about fixture difficulty but as you say it's glaringly obvious from the distribution of those graphs that there is no correlation in this dataset. It would be really interesting to see an analysis with past whole season data to see if there is a statistically significant difference there between how many goals players score against tighter vs more open defences?

    For those wondering about whether players like Vardy have scored more in less in the more difficult fixtures they have played so far I wrote about this a week or so ago (see link below).

    http://www.fantasyfootballscout.co.uk/2015/11/12/are-vardy-and-mahrez-fixture-proof/

    Open Controls
    1. rakkhi
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 5 months ago

      Thanks. Yes would have liked to have done prior years but no fixture list as easily available as the scout one for this year. Maybe if they offer past years fixture lists.

      Open Controls
      1. Jose's Magic Omelette
        • 10 Years
        8 years, 5 months ago

        Doosra, might be able to help with that?

        Are you on twitter/email, I have some questions for you on how you transfer your datasets from the web to your statistical software of choice?

        Open Controls
        1. rakkhi
          • Fantasy Football Scout Member
          • 13 Years
          8 years, 5 months ago

          Yeah if he has past fixture lists in a format like the season list here that would be great. You got his contact details to drop him a note? Nothing sophisticated about how I get data, just screen scrape manually mostly, people like Paul Riley recently made his expected goals and assists data available via spreadsheet which saves time. I use Tableau as my visualisation software of choice the public version is free and I love it. I'm @rakkhis on Twitter and Rakkhi.s[at]gmail.com on email.

          Open Controls
  9. Hyperion
    • 12 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Interesting article. The only thing that confuses me is you say that the correlation between goals and fixture difficulty is statistically insignificant, yet suggest certain players will have an upturn in form or maintain their form due to having easier fixtures and highlight Lukaku as someone who takes advantage of easier fixtures. Are you saying you still think fixtures are significant despite the graphs not really backing you up?

    Open Controls
    1. Jose's Magic Omelette
      • 10 Years
      8 years, 5 months ago

      Exactly, clear to see from the graphs that the distribution is very far away from any correlation. However perhaps the sample is too small to rule out the relevance of fixture difficulty altogether. I would like to see multiple season data analysed.

      Open Controls
    2. rakkhi
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      8 years, 5 months ago

      Yeah sorry that is a bit inconsistent. If you follow the data there is no strong correlation between fixtures and goals scored. As Jose says this could be sample size though. That's across the population though, what I'm highlighting are key players who have scored well across hard fixtures, in theory they should do even better in easier ones

      Open Controls
      1. Hyperion
        • 12 Years
        8 years, 5 months ago

        OK thanks for the clarification. Will be interesting to see how things look after another 10 games or so.

        Open Controls
  10. Van Klinkert Delarosa
    • 9 Years
    8 years, 5 months ago

    Brilliant read. 🙂

    Thanks for submitting.

    Open Controls

You need to be logged in to post a comment.