Lateriser: How premium players fare against different levels of opponent

Two-time Indian Fantasy Premier League (FPL) champion Lateriser brings out his ‘Kolarov, Lescott and Bramble’ table to assess how premium assets are performing against strong, average and poor teams.

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This season’s FPL seems much more fun than it has been for the last few years. This has nothing to do with the outcomes but more about the number of decisions we’ve had to make and the optionality in picks. There seems to be no clear ‘template’ and long may that continue.

There are many ways to skin a draft and none are objectively right or wrong, with the tough pricing meaning it’ll be difficult to own more than three or four premiums at once.

Keeping that in mind, I thought it might be worth paying close attention to these big hitters and premiums to assess their performances versus different kinds of opposition, what upcoming fixtures they have and try to decipher if there are any trends we can spot with them.

For example, is Bukayo Saka (£10.1m) fixture-proof? How much of a flat-track bully is he compared to Cole Palmer (£10.8m)? Diving deeper into this will hopefully pay rewards and it’s just generally fun data to look at.

THE KOLAROV, LESCOTT + BRAMBLE TABLE

I did the ‘Kolarov, Lescott and Bramble’ table last year, looking at performance data against good, average and poor defences. Let’s check it out.

To categorise opponents, I base it on expected goals conceded (xGC). The top six are Kolarov, the middle six are Lescott and the bottom eight are Bramble.

What this table shows us is the points per start against all three categories, plus a home-away breakdown.

This time, I went a little deeper into the data, adding some underlying numbers to it. Which is why I’ve also created the table below.

Anyway, that’s all from me. I hope this table helps you with your decision-making and, again, if you spot anything interesting, tell me on X. Fellow Pro Pundit Zophar and I did a ‘What we know so far’ video during this international break, which you can check out below:

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