In the limited budget game of FPL, sadly we can’t own all the premium players. Some will try – World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has at times this season owned four premiums and done very well (currently 223 OR) – but most advocate a balanced approach favouring two or three £11m+ players.
In this article I focus on the six players costing over £11.0m – Salah (£13.3), Kane (£12.6), Aubameyang (£11.4), Sterling (£11.3), Aguero (£11.2), and Hazard (£11.1).
I use xG Delta to examine their goalscoring ability. First a quick recap on xG:
The idea behind xG is to quantify the likelihood of a goal being scored from a particular chance. The higher the xG, the better the opportunity.
For example in the most recent round of fixtures, Romelu Lukaku’s goal against Newcastle had an xG of 0.61, meaning it should be scored 61% of the time. Whereas Sergio Aguero’s goal against Liverpool had an xG of only 0.05, meaning it should be scored 5% of the time.
Intuitively we know that Aguero’s was a much harder chance, that is reflected in the xG numbers.
What xG Delta does is measure how the reality compares to the probability. If a player has 12 goals from an xG of 9, then he has scored 3 more goals than we would expect from a player of average ability. He has an xG Delta of +3.
Over a short period of time this could simply be due to a run of good form, but players who consistently exceed their xG can be regarded as expert finishers.
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5 years, 3 months ago
Fantastic Article!