Wisdom of The Crowd: Gameweek 17

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 16 REVIEW

It was a second red arrow in a row last weekend for our Crowd Wisdom user, with 5 correct predictions out of 10 lower than the community average of 5.59 correct picks.  It meant a small drop in the rankings, but the collective wisdom of the crowd is still beating 80% of individuals on Superbru.

GAMEWEEK 17 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in GW17:

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

Most people are handing the armband to Harry Kane this weekend, according to the Captain Poll, but Man City are predicted to be the highest-scoring team in their home fixture versus Everton.

There’s not much in it though, and the smaller risk of rotation means Kane might be the safest option.  Arsenal and Chelsea are also worth considering however, as Aubameyang and Hazard are likely to score well in their away fixtures on the south coast.

Spurs’ assets seem worth backing in defence, with a clean sheet expected at home to Burnley, whilst Watford, West Ham, and Newcastle offer the budget-friendly options.

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

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