As Fantasy writers and managers, many of us place a lot of emphasis on underlying statistics in our research and articles.
Be it penalty box touches, attempts on goal or key passes, the key performance indicators (KPIs) in both attack and defence can help form our judgements on certain players and teams.
Of course, there is a subculture of Fantasy Premier League bosses who think the whole thing is a load of mind-cluttering claptrap and prefer to rely on the so-called ‘eye test’, gut instinct or basic figures such as goals scored and clean sheets.
There is a statistic that unites the two approaches: goal conversion rate.
This is a KPI that deals in cold, hard fact and tells us how clinical players are with the chances they are afforded.
Being presented with a host of goalscoring opportunities is one thing but if Fantasy assets are not ruthless enough when seeing the whites of a goalkeeper’s eyes, then all the underlying stats in the world mean nothing.
One only has to look at poor Che Adams’ (£5.6m) KPIs – the Southampton striker had five big chances in the first six Gameweeks, an eye-catching statistic had it not been for the fact that he failed to convert any of them or indeed a single one of his 12 attempts on goal overall.
Is goal conversion rate something we should pay more attention to, then?
It is certainly relevant: eight of the current top ten in the Premier League sit in the top half of the table for goal conversion, underscoring the very obvious point that better quality players convert a higher proportion of their chances, no matter how many or few.
The rest of this article will look at the goal conversion rate of various key FPL assets, to see if their current output is sustainable or likely to regress/improve based on past figures.
Lessons learned from Gameweek 9
- Everton 2-0 West Ham United
- Aston Villa 2-1 Brighton and Hove Albion
- Bournemouth 0-0 Norwich City
- Chelsea 1-0 Newcastle United
- Leicester City 2-1 Burnley
- Tottenham Hotspur 1-1 Watford
- Wolves 1-1 Southampton
- Crystal Palace 0-2 Manchester City
- Manchester United 1-1 Liverpool
- Sheffield United 1-0 Arsenal
Members can view goal conversion rates on the Goal Threat tabs under Players Stats.
