We’ve a number of things in development right now, including the new event maps to be added to the members area, a new version of the season ticker which will get the tool back in the sidebar on every page of the site and the members’ pre-season player projections.
I’m directly involved in the latter, working with Fantasy Football statistician Chris Atkinson, the creator of the statistical model that powered his “Rate My Team” website over the past two seasons. Last year the stats brains amongst the Scout Team, namely Pure Olivia and Superior Being, spent a lot of time looking at Chris’ model and came to the conclusion that he had created something really rather special.
The model is built specifically to assess every player in the Premier League and return their expected values for Fantasy Premier League points in a given Gameweek. The system is a complex and thorough one which, of course, plots the probabilities of a player’s time on the pitch, their expected number of goals, assists, bonus points, yellow and red cards, clean sheets, own goals, goals conceded and saves. The strength of the opponent they are facing in a given Gameweek is also crucial; so every team has a attacking, defensive rating, every player a probability of playing a given match with injuries, suspensions and international absence or factored in.
When it came to improving our projections for the coming season, it was a no-brainer for us. We approached Chris to be involved and we’re delighted to say he joined the Scout team ranks earlier this year. We’ve been spending several weeks working with the existing model and hatching plans for improvements. However, the pre-season projections have been the priority and they are now close to their first release.
Right now we’re factoring in the effect of the African Cup of Nations on those likely to participate but, once that is added to the model, we’ll be very close to a first set of numbers.
We’re looking to publish full projections for every player, plotting their total points, goals, assists etc for the entire season. We’re also looking to deliver short-term projections offering a view of the opening six Gameweeks.
The projection tables will be fully sortable and you can assess FPL points per million value to help you run the rule of those crucial budget purchases.
I’m certainly encouraged by the numbers being produced at the moment and have no doubt that, by bringing in Chris’ model, we’ve taken a big step to delivering our the best set of pre-season projections yet. I’ll hopefully bring you more on this in the next few days…
