Wisdom of the Crowd: Gameweek 16

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 15 REVIEW

Our Crowd Wisdom user performed a little worse than average in midweek, with 5 correct picks out of 10, behind the community average of 5.65.  It meant a second small red arrow in a row, but we’ll see how it goes this weekend.

GAMEWEEK 16 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in GW16:

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

For the first time this season, Arsenal top the predicted goals chart, and it’s no surprise to see that Aubameyang is the captain poll leader.

However, managers won’t be short of options this week, as Liverpool, Man United, Tottenham, and Man City are all predicted to score at least two goals, which brings some of the usual suspects into the reckoning, such as Mo Salah, Harry Kane, and Raheem Sterling.

Arsenal is also the top defensive pick, with West Ham, Brighton and Cardiff offering cheaper alternatives to the big guns at the back.

Here are the aggregated predictions that we’ll enter for Mr Crowd Wisdom this week.

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

Good luck!