Wisdom of The Crowd: Gameweek 32

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 31 REVIEW

The average crowd picks performed better than the community average in the short Round 31, with 3 correct picks out of 5, including the Bournemouth and Newcastle draw.

GAMEWEEK 32 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in the shortened GW32:

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

A huge double gameweek lies ahead of us, and Man City’s generous fixtures cannot be ignored.  They are predicted to score at least 3 goals in each of their matches, and are predicted to keep a clean sheet in both.  Could Ederson be the man for the armband, with this in mind?

Chelsea are next on the predicted goals list, just ahead of Man United, with Wolves, Crystal Palace and Watford likely to make up the numbers in the GW32 dream team.

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

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

Advance warning that I won’t be able to write this next week as I’ll be away, and it’s not worth the grief from my wife and kids!