Player Value – 2019/20 Review

Cheers Hedge - really enjoyed your articles at the start of the last season, so really looking forward to your next piece!

Cheers! I think that what has become clear from these is that premium defenders, even if you only play 3, works better - of course getting the right ones is usually pretty hard but the Liverpool 3 have been pretty solid 2 years in a row now with not much personnel change

and now that there are a few players seemingly able to keep up with Salah/Mane I'm very tempted by a VVD TAA Robbo perma-defence, then it becomes a straight comparison between the other positions on a vorp/ppm basis I guess - which could still bring Doherty and City boys into the equation, or maybe someone like Dallas to slot in next to them

Rebelled last year against the two cheapies up top model and will likely do so again

Rationale is partly Ings variant may reappear but it’s chancy hitting him for value. Plenty - most I suspect - missed his real value as they piled in comparatively late. There were of course decent reasons to avoid him.

More generally 6.5s are very chancy- they’re priced like that because they are so hit and miss. Preseason Barnes and King and a slightly more expensive Wilson were all the rage. It can take several transfers to hit the correct one.

Other point is getting a premium allows an easy move to Rashford and Vardy - downgrades are both easier and cheaper than uogrades.

Say this as someone who hit the perfect Pukki -Ings GW2 onwards streak. I also hit Jim almost perfectly in 18/19. Luck as much as judgement surely

Really interesting article, thanks. My gut feeling is that this year the "one 11+ player" outcome may no longer be the optimal strategy. Looking at the list of players I'm predicting to be 10m+ (Salah, Mane, KDB, Sterling, Aguero, Jesus, Rashford, Martial, Bruno, Werner, Auba, Kane, Vardy) - I could see 2 or 3 or even 4 of those breaking the 250+ point mark (though squeezing in more than 3, at a stretch, is surely implausible).

I suppose Werner and Martial might be 9.5, and there may be other players at that bracket or slightly lower (Son, Pulisic, Jimenez, Ings just below) who score well enough that the optimal model from the last couple of years looks the same again - but I fancy (and am kind of hoping) we might see something a bit different this season.

My question is (and obvs we don't know prices yet, but we can make rough estimates) - if the optimal model is to look the same next year, who are the players we expect to be priced 7.5-9.5m that we could see scoring ~200 points? And, in a similar vein, is there anyone we expect to be priced in the bracket below (5.5-7.0) that we could see scoring 170+ points? I know there'll be plenty of players who flit between good runs and poor runs, and that most players aren't going to be season-keepers - but if we can identify the players with sub-premium prices who are best-placed to score premium returns (like Hedge did this season, and I'm sure a few more of us did, too - I had KDB from the start and brought in Vardy fairly early) - that seems to be a good platform to build on!

Yeah that's a good point. I guess in that scenario (where there are a lot of players who perform really well - KDB, Salah, Bruno, Sterling all priced at 11+ and getting 250+ points, say, while Pulisic, Son, Jimenez, Ings are all priced 8.5-9.5 and score 200 points) - the question (assuming you've got KDB, say, as a captain option) of whether Salah + Bruno + 6m attacker makes for a better option than Pulisic + Son + Jimenez/Ings would largely depend on a) whether captaincy rotation/flexiblity works better than perma-capping KDB, and b) whether there are any 6m forwards (or mids) scoring well enough for the less even spread of funds to outscore the more balanced option.

Actually, I think the 6m forward analysis doesn't quite work because we're probably looking at 29m (Salah 12, Bruno 11, ??? 6) vs 27.5m (Pulisic 9, Jimenez 9, Son 9.5) - so I need to give it a bit more thought...!

Thanks for writing this article. I appreciate the effort that goes in and enjoy this type of analysis.

What's on my mind, is whether this assesment tales into account transfers. It seems like the ideal approach for a set and forget team. But does it take into account peaks and troughs of form?

My worry with picking a starting squad based on optimal value, is that it may leave you inflexible e.g. if one or more premium forwards start the season well. At that point, the "optimal value" team would fall

Nice, conise and to the point. Best type of articles to read imo. Well done indeed.

Thanks for replying and taking my thoughts into consideration

Good article. Thanks

Anyone know when prices for next season come out?

Good read. My only problem is Liverpool not keeping a clean sheet in six straight games upon Alisson's return, and leaked in all their last five matches - to Brighton, Burnley and Newcastle, no less.

Every summer I see these arguments to go big at the back, based on last season's final tally ("We might have well have just played him"), but they don't really foresee the pitfalls ahead - injuries, slumps, Covid non-crowds, etc. Alisson, for example, looked a solid pick last summer as an affordable route into Pool's defence. Ultimately looks way overpriced.

Two/three Pool defenders seems reckless, imo, as it takes just one slip to lose a clean sheet, however good the team is.

The value of premium defenders is also a sticky subject. If we compare VVD (priced £6.5m at the start of the season, with little fluctuation) with Tarkowski (£5m, rising to £5.5m), VVD looks in hindsight to be the better choice - 4.68 goals per game over 3.76 (both playing 3420 minutes all season). But when you consider we're forced from the off to spend £4m in each those slots, a different picture emerges. For the £2.5m spent on VVD you reap back 71.2 points per million spent versus Tarkowski's 143 points per million.

Wing-backs are a different story - those who in any week can return double figures. But this idea of filling the gaps with central defenders because they play for Pool or City puts me off, personally.

Nice article Hedge. Thanks for this; really appreciate your efforts. My last season’s “value” team didn’t get off to the best start but I’m going to do it again this season. Cheers.

Just spotted how odd that midfield looks from a GW1 point of view.

Mane KdB no one had and was even strictly minority interest in GW2 when Mane returned

Martial and Mahrez weren’t in the reckoning either if you look at overall selection stats and add a slight bias to Martial given United fan base.

This would have got many raised eyebrows 12 months back - the power at the back is the least of it.

Cheers for this article. Premium defenders at the beginning of the season, as you alluded to, just did not get the returns I was expecting (Pool, Digne). Certainly caused a slow start for me that was hard to come back from (many variables involved obviously, not only this).

Besides the value for premium defenders, I’ve always been interested in the idea of having only 1 premium (2 max) and perma-captaining for the most part. Allows you to spread the cash out into 8.5- 9.5 mids and forwards as you alluded to.

Was rectifying to see Pool defenders still finish the season with solid scores, even after their poor start. I’m sticking with the big at the back strategy as the data still seems to be there, despite how this season went.

This adds up to a score of 2178 excluding captain and 2429 with KDB perma capped.

2575 was the highest score this season.

Does this make entire article bollox?

Hedge, I don't think the squad you listed is quite the maximum value - unless I'm missing something, you're better off getting Salah over Mane, funded by Willian over Mahrez, and using the spare 0.5 to upgrade VVD to Robertson:

Pope
Trent/Robbo/Doherty
De Bruyne/Willian/Salah/Martial
Vardy/Ings/Jimenez

With a flat bench, this is 2182 points, compared to 2174 with the variation you listed. The trends are the same but I think the inclusion of Salah, and the even bigger defence, are noteworthy.

Just on the premium defenders point. Is there not a lot of value by picking out the 4/4.5 defenders at the start of the season who could rise significantly? So premium defenders are better to build as the season goes on?

Really interesting read btw

Really interesting stuff Hedge, as it has been the case in previous years too.
I did a (much more simplified) excercice myself lately, when I was wondering: would it have been possible to pick a 'set and forget' team and captain at the beginning of the season, which would land me as much (or more) points than what I ended up with after a year long of pondering, frustration and regrets - and the occasional joy of getting it spot-on?

So i looked at the top-10 scorers (total score at the end of the season) for every position, and calculated the points per million ratio based on the starting value. From this limited group of players, I selected the top GK, top-4 DEF, top-4 MID and top-3 FWD in terms of ppm. This would give me Pope, Lundstram, Baldock, Egan, TAA, Martial, KDB, Grealish, Willian, Ings, Jimenez and Vardy.

When taking into account a budget of 3x4,5 mio for the remaining 3 positions (spare GK, 5th DEF and 5th MID), there was substantial money left to spend, so I looked at upgrading the above list by replacing some of these high-ppm players with the highest overall-scoring players.
This way, Baldock, Egan and Willian were replaced by VVD, Doherty and Salah.
The best scoring set-and-forget team (first 11) would thus become:
Pope
TAA - VVD - Doherty
Martial - Salah - Grealish - KDB
Ings - Jimenez - Vardy
with a bench of any 4.5 GK; Lundstram and a 5.0 DEF (like Tarkowski) and a 4.5 MID (like Dendoncker)

So I end up - to both my surprise and satisfaction - with the same team as you, apart from the Salah / Grealish vs Mané / Mahrez combination (according to my calculation Salah / Grealish slightly outperformed Mané / Mahrez in terms of total points).

I would say that, apart from Danny Ings, the above looks like a team people could have picked in GW 1 and would have lead them (if consistently captaining KDB) into a comfortable top-20k finish, maybe even top-15k with a bit of bench boost and TC luck.