Wisdom of The Crowd: Gameweek 30

Each week we will be reviewing the aggregated predictions on Superbru’s Premier League Predictor game, using the collective Wisdom of the Crowd predictions to guide our fantasy football thinking.

Please join the FFS league here and add your own predictions to the data – the more there are, the more accurate the crowd should be (in theory).  And don’t forget there is £50,000 in prize money on offer every week.

THE CONCEPT

We must all make predictions about how each match will go when deciding on our fantasy team selection, predicting where the goals will be scored, which teams are most likely to keep a clean sheet and so on.  If we aggregate the predictions of thousands of football fans playing the Premier League Predictor game on Superbru, any bias should be ironed out, and the collective knowledge will produce more accurate predictions that we can make on our own.

We tested this last season by taking the average community predictions, and entering them into the game as a user called Mr Crowd Wisdom.  That user finished in 20th place out of 481 people in the Fantasy Football Scout league – a highly knowledgeable group – and also beat 98% of other people on the global leaderboard.

We’ll follow the average picks again this season and hopefully it will provide another reference point for your fantasy team selections.

GAMEWEEK 29 REVIEW

it was a poor week for the crowd picks in Round 29, managing just 4 correct predictions out of 10 – there was only one draw in the round in the North London Derby, one of the few matches where the average pick wasn’t 1-1!

GAMEWEEK 30 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in GW30:

And here is the ranking of teams in order of Expected Goals Scored and Conceded:

Man City and Liverpool are top of the predicted goals chart yet again, both with relatively kind home fixtures.  It’s notable though that the predictions are a little more conservative than they were earlier in the season, when both teams were regularly expected to score at least 3 goals each.

Sergio Aguero versus Mo Salah appears to be the big captain conundrum, with Aguero just shading the captains poll, and this crowd data appears to support that decision.

Liverpool are also expected to keep a clean sheet, and given that their defenders are racking up points at both ends of the pitch, would you consider captaining Andrew Robertson or Virgil Van Dijk?

Leicester, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, West Ham provide the budget-friendly defensive picks this week.

Here are the picks we’ll enter for Mr Crowd Wisdom:

Crystal Palace 2 – 1 Brighton
Cardiff 1 – 2 West Ham
Huddersfield 1 – 1 Bournemouth
Leicester 2 – 1 Fulham
Newcastle 1 – 1 Everton
Southampton 1 – 2 Tottenham
Man City 3 – 1 Watford
Liverpool 2 – 0 Burnley
Chelsea 2 – 1 Wolves
Arsenal 1 – 2 Man United