Wisdom of The Crowd: Gameweek 22

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 21 REVIEW

The Crowd managed 5 correct predictions out 10 last weekend, beating the community average of 4.43, with triumphs including the Bournemouth and Watford draw – although not many people predicted 3 goals apiece.

GAMEWEEK 22 PREVIEW

Here is the Expected Goals chart for each fixture in GW22:

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

Playing at home this weekend, Man City are restored to the top of the predicted goals chart, although people are being slightly more conservative with their predictions with an average of 2.78 goals predicted, compared to well over 3 in previous weeks.

Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are also expected to score at least 2 goals each, and it’s no surprise to see the likes of Mo Salah, Eden Hazard, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sergio Aguero towards the top of the Captain Poll.

In defence, Chelsea and Liverpool are predicted to keep a clean sheet, whilst Cardiff, Leicester, and Burnley are also backed to do well.

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

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