Fantasy Football bandwagons involve the mass transferring in of a particular player, who often is likely to have registered an excellent points haul the week before.
Sometimes Fantasy managers can be so desperate to draft them in that they are willing to take a hit to secure their services. But for some, doubts remain.
Am I chasing Points? Is their explosive points return a one off? These are the common questions that vex those that love this game.
Bandwagons this season
Here I aim to find out whether targeting bandwagons can lead to success or failure. For this analysis I have taken the most transferred in player each Gameweek then looked at the points they immediately offered their new owners.
Results
- If we captained the most transferred player each week we would have 302 points, which does not beat my own captain score so far of 360 but does beat a few of my mini-league rivals, who are in the top 75,000 in Fantasy Premier League’s overall rankings.
- Notable bandwagons flops were Tottenham’s Heung-min Son in Gameweek 8 and Manchester City’s Ilkey Gundogan in Gameweek 11. Etienne Capoue in Gameweek 5 provided an immediate return. But who would have captained the Watford midfielder that week?
- The average points scored by the most transferred player over a season is 5.59, which indicates it’s a much reduced risk to captain or take a hit on bandwagons.
- We would have a much better team value if we purchased every bandwagon.
- On five occasions the most transferred player of the week delivered a double digit score.
Conclusion
What was learned from this analysis? Bandwagons can be hit and miss when looking short term but over a season having a player that scores 5.59 PPG in our team is not too bad.
The most interesting theory is that it’s less risky to captain a bandwagon than it is to captain a player you feel is due a big score or who has low ownership but appealing underlying statistics. We could conclude that in the remaining weeks of the season when we hunt differential captains to catch mini league rivals simply handing the armband to the most transferred in player could be the ideal option.
Ahead of Gameweek 28 it is worth noting that Fernando Llorente of Swansea, with 99,000 new owners, is currently the biggest bandwagon, closely followed by Liverpool’s Sadio Mane, on 92,000 transfers in.
