2018/19 Premier League – A Guide to Fixture Rotation

With the World Cup in full swing, Fantasy managers could be forgiven for putting the domestic game to the back of their minds.

The release of the 2018/19 Premier League fixture list, however, means we can start our pre-season planning in earnest with a look at fixture rotation.

Many Fantasy managers will be familiar with the approach but for the uninitiated, we’ll begin by exploring the strategy in detail.

The Concept

Selecting assets according to fixture rotation is a strategy that can only be applied to squad-based Fantasy games. It’s also often restricted to the assessment of goalkeepers, defenders and assets in the budget end of the market.

The idea is to simply find a couple of low-cost players whose fixtures dovetail, either to offer successive home matches or, at the very least, a prolonged spell of favourable opponents. This allows for the selection of one player – with the other asset benched – to guarantee us a home encounter or a strong fixture.

A rotation policy tends to focus on the acquisition of budget options, mainly because many Fantasy managers will resist benching mid-price and premium assets.

Those playing games limited to just a starting XI – such as Sky Sports – won’t need to turn to this strategy. But for Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers, rotation can be a useful variable to consider when compiling an initial squad and, as we will see, it can be effective.

Above all, it can help maximise the points returns from two budget options – freeing up funds for big investment elsewhere.

We’ll begin our exploration of this strategy with a look at the defensive benefits that home advantage brings.

Home Advantage – A Season-by-Season Analysis

CS = Clean Sheets
GC = Goals Conceded

For the second season running, the percentage of clean sheets being kept at home broke the 60% barrier. Though there was a slight drop-off in home shut-outs from the percentage posted in 2016/17, the percentage of goals conceded at home in 2017/18 fell to 42.83% from 42.95% the season before.

The total of 136 home clean sheets posted in 2017/18 was five better than the previous campaign and the highest figure since 2013/14, when 137 home shut-outs were recorded.

Only relegated West Bromwich Albion and champions Manchester City – two sides whose assets Fantasy managers won’t be rotating in 2018/19 – conceded more goals at home in 2017/18 than they did on their travels, further underlining the importance of home advantage.

It’s hardly a surprise that a side playing on their own turf has a better chance of keeping a clean sheet, but as our team-by-team breakdown illustrates, home advantage is more pronounced with some teams that it is with others.

2017/18 CLEAN SHEETS – HOME AND AWAY SPLIT

In 2016/17, Tottenham Hotspur were the only team to hit double figures for home clean sheets. Four of the top five managed that in 2017/18, with Arsenal only one shut-out away from joining them.

Manchester City have become something of an anomaly in recent years: this was the third successive season in which they have kept more clean sheets on the road than at the Etihad.

Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea pressed their home advantage considerably more in 2017/18 than they did in the previous campaign: indeed, Jurgen Klopp’s side kept six more clean sheets at Anfield than they did in 2016/17.

What would perhaps be of some concern to Fantasy managers who rotate budget goalkeepers and defenders would be the diminishing role that home advantage plays for sides outside the top six.

Crystal Palace and Southampton registered more shut-outs on their travels than they did at Selhurst Park and St Mary’s respectively, while Bournemouth, Watford, West Ham United, Leicester City and two of the three relegated clubs – Swansea City and Stoke City – were not as dominant defensively on their own turf as they had been in 2016/17: the difference between home and away clean sheets was less marked this time around.

Debutants Brighton and Hove Albion kept as many shut-outs on the road as they did at the Amex, meanwhile. The other two promoted clubs, Newcastle United and Huddersfield Town, were much stronger clean sheet prospects at home than they were away, however.

2018/19 HOME AND AWAY PAIRINGS

In theory, there ought to be ten pairings that alternate home fixtures perfectly. These are often decided by geographical proximity, created by the need to spread police resourcing.

Everton/Liverpool, Manchester United/Manchester City, Fulham/Chelsea, Huddersfield/Burnley and Wolves/Leicester rotate in this way, barring any fixture postponements later in the season.

Spurs/Arsenal would ordinarily alternate home and away fixtures, of course, but the Premier League schedule has been somewhat complicated early in the season due to Spurs’ new ground not being ready for the start of 2018/19.

That combination – along with the Manchester and Merseyside clubs – is largely irrelevant anyway when it comes to rotation because of the price tags associated with the respective clubs’ assets.

There are eight perfect pairings in total:

Southampton and West Ham look like a great pairing for the first five fixtures (BUR, BOU, LEI, WLV, BHA) but it pays to look beyond the succession of home matches and factor fixture difficulty into the equation.

Newcastle and Brighton, for example, looks an enticing double-up on paper but rotating their home matches early in the season would appear to be folly (their first six combined home matches are TOT, MUN, CHE, FUL, ARS, TOT).

Bournemouth and Crystal Palace offer a balance of perfect home rotation and decent away fixtures: alternating assets of these two clubs would give a run of CDF, whu, EVE, SOU, LEI, NEW, CRY, WLV, SOU, ful in the opening ten Gameweeks of the season.

Gregor and Ludo are among the regulars who have been discussing the rotation options on our site and we’ll have a more in-depth look at the best interchanging pairs for 2018/19 over the summer.

Last Season’s Pairings

We looked at two rotating pairs before the start of last season: Swansea/West Brom and Bournemouth/Brighton.

In these articles, we promoted the rotation these teams offered up to Gameweek 21 – the point where the second FPL Wildcard became available.

Swansea/West Brom

These two clubs offered perfect rotation all season, with only the blank Gameweek 31 offering no home fixture for either side.

Gameweeks 1-10

BOU MUN/bur STK NEW WHM WAT WAT HUD LEI MCI/ars

Gameweeks 11-21

BHA bur/CHE BOU NEW CRY WBA MCI/liv MUN/eve CRY EVE/liv wat/ARS

A modest seven clean sheets were recorded over the opening 21 home games, though that total could have been boosted to nine factoring in Albion’s shut-outs in Gameweeks 2 and 17 (away matches against Burnley and Liverpool).

Bournemouth/Brighton

This was a very different pairing: these two clubs’ home fixtures dovetailed nicely until Gameweek 9 and from Gameweek 19 onwards, though the ten fixtures in between meant that Fantasy managers were forced to pick between simultaneous home/away fixtures between mid-October and mid-December.

As a result, there was more focus on fixture difficulty for the first 21 Gameweeks of the season:

Gameweeks 1-10

wba WAT wat WBA BHA NEW LEI EVE/tot whu/stk SOT

Gameweeks 11-21

swa HUD swa BUR SOT hud tot/mun BUR WAT WHU new

Ten clean sheets were recorded up to and including Gameweek 21 if Fantasy managers opted for Brighton’s defensive assets in their 3-0 win at West Ham in Gameweek 9, rather than Bournemouth’s backline for their trip to Stoke.

A clean sheet almost once every other match is a decent return for a budget defender or goalkeeper, particularly if backed up by save points in the case of the latter.

IN PRACTICE

As mentioned above, Swansea and West Brom rotated home fixtures perfectly all season (aside from Gameweek 31).

Lukasz Fabianski and Ben Foster were both priced up as £4.5m-rated goalkeepers at the start of 2017/18 and seemed to be the pairing of choice for Fantasy managers who wanted to rotate budget shot-stoppers rather than plump for a premium asset like David de Gea.

By electing to play the home goalkeeper in every fixture of last season (fielding Foster in Gameweek 31 and Fabianski in the Double Gameweek 37), Fantasy managers would have accrued 132 points: some 25 less than Fabianski scored on his own.

The Polish custodian started 2017/18 with three consecutive clean sheets (including a double-digit haul at Spurs) on the road and saved spot-kicks in two away games over the course of the season. While Fabianski’s away haul was unusually good, it shows that rotation is not without its drawbacks.

A better example of rotational success last season would be Harry Maguire (£5.0m) and Jamaal Lascelles (£4.5m), whose sides – Leicester and Newcastle – also had perfect fixture rotation, bar a blank in Gameweek 31. While Maguire’s starting price comes in at the high-end of what could be described as “budget”, rotating the two centre-backs would have reaped huge dividends.

Maguire and Lascelles scored 117 and 116 points respectively last season but blooding them only for home fixtures (Maguire covering Lascelles’ injury between Gameweeks 12 and 16 and indeed being the preferred option for the Double Gameweeks in 34 and 37) would have yielded 151 points.

That total was bettered only Nicolas Otamendi (156), Cesar Azpilicueta (165) and Marcos Alonso (175) in FPL last season, while the highest score posted by a defender with a starting price of £5.0m or below was Aaron Cresswell’s 118.

POSITIONAL ROTATION IN 2018/19

GOALKEEPERS

The goalkeeping position is ripe for rotation in the method we’ve outlined above. With save and bonus points compensating for any goals conceded (or indeed bolstering the usual six points one would expect from a clean sheet) in FPL, mid-price and budget solutions can easily match the output of the more expensive shot-stoppers.

Three of the five highest-scoring goalkeepers in FPL last season started off at £4.5m: Fabianski, Nick Pope and Mathew Ryan. Martin Dubravka, a January transfer window signing for Newcastle who was also priced up at £4.5m, averaged 4.4 points per match in his 12 appearances between the posts for the Magpies: that mean betters premium goalkeepers such as Hugo Lloris and Thibaut Courtois.

While we can expect the likes of Pope and Fabianski – should he make a move to another Premier League club from relegated Swansea, as expected – to rise in price, there will still be plenty of options in the budget price bracket.

Ryan and Dubravka are ones to watch from Gameweek 7 onwards, perhaps for those deploying their first Wildcard early in the season. Rotating the two until Christmas would give a run of LEI, WHU, BHA, WLV, WAT, BOU, LEI, WHU, CRY, WLV, hud, FUL.

Leicester and Wolves looks like an excellent pairing until Gameweek 18, though at least one – if not both – of Kasper Schmeichel and Rui Patricio will surely be initially priced at £5.0m.

DEFENDERS

Fantasy managers’ goalkeeper picks are likely to be determined by the defensive alternatives on offer. Attack-minded wing-back Barry Douglas of Wolves, for example, would appear to be a better way into the Championship winners’ backline than Rui Patricio.

Should Douglas and, perhaps, Leicester’s Ricardo Pereira be priced at £5.0m or under, this duo would arguably be a better pairing than the two clubs’ respective goalkeepers, offering as they do the possibility of attacking returns as well as defensive ones.

Bournemouth and Crystal Palace kept only seven home clean sheets between them last season but the two clubs’ favourable starts and complimenting home/away schedules seems too good to resist: a Charlie Daniels/Patrick van Aanholt double-up certainly appeals, but a pairing of perhaps Simon Francis and James Tomkins (depending on their starting prices) would free up funds to spend elsewhere.

FPL managers have numerous options available to them in defence: load up on premium assets; combine two big-priced defenders with a dovetailing pair; or perhaps even venture down the three-way rotation route. Peter Blake’s excellent article expounds on this last approach.

MIDFIELDERS AND FORWARDS

Fixture-led rotation, of course, is not just limited to goalkeepers and defenders. Rotating two budget assets in the fourth midfield spot or indeed interchanging a cheap, fifth midfielder with a similarly priced forward are two common approaches in FPL.

Midfielders Junior Stanislas and Ruben Loftus-Cheek would interchange well for the Bournemouth/Palace cycle, while Matt Ritchie and Glenn Murray (should the veteran striker still be in Chris Hughton’s first-team plans after the signing of Florin Andone) would perhaps work nicely in tandem after the first half-dozen Gameweeks are over.

As we mentioned in these articles last year, rotation in the attacking positions is arguably far more difficult to plan in the long or even medium term due to the inevitable fluctuations in form.

We are also, of course, two months away from the start of the 2018/19 season and there is much transfer activity to be done in that time: there are still over seven weeks until the summer transfer window closes.

Too much speculative talk about personnel pairings at this juncture would be unwise, given that we are also yet to cast our eyes over the FPL price list or witness any pre-season action. But we can, at least, begin to plan our strategies around the 20 Premier League clubs and their fixtures.

USING THE FIXTURE TICKER

The 2018/19 Season Ticker is now live in the Members’ area. By selecting any team in the Ticker and clicking “Sort by Rotation”, you will be able to see teams ranked according to their suitability for rotation with the highlighted team.

You can apply this using both the attacking and defence filters to analyse rotation pairings in attack and defence. For a guide to using this feature, visit this chapter of our preview movie.

Over the coming month, we will take a closer look at the strongest rotation pairings on offer and discuss the potential assets available when considering the goalkeeper slots, interchangeable backlines and even options in the final third.