Wisdom of The Crowd: Gameweek 21

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 20 REVIEW

Its was a disappointing round for the Crowd’s picks in GW19, with 4 correct predictions out of 10 coming in slightly below the community average of 4.61.  It meant a red arrow and a drop in the rankings, but luckily there’s an immediate chance to make amends.

GAMEWEEK 21 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in GW21:

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

Arsenal top the rankings for predicted goals scored this round, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang likely to feature as many people’s captain. Spurs, Chelsea, and Man United are not far behind though, bringing the likes of Harry Kane, Eden Hazard and Paul Pogba into contention.

In defence, Arsenal and Chelsea offer the pick of the premium options, whilst West Ham, Burnley, and Wolves could supply the best budget options.

Here are the picks we’ll enter for Mr Crowd Wisdom this week:

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

Good luck and Happy New Year!