Expected Goals Analysis for the Premier League 2017/2018
Sindre Ek
A new season is about to start and that means that a new season with fantasy football is about to kickoff. I have therefore created a useful graphic that can help people make tough, and clever decisions. The data is provided by Stratabet with excellent measurements surrounding each Premier League player. These measurements include: chances, goals, assists and secondary assists.
Expected goals:
Statisticians use expected goals as a benchmark as to how each Premier League player ‘should’ perform during the season. By looking at Mohamed Salah, he was expected to score 24 goals and in actual fact he scored 32 goals. This proves that he outperformed. Benteke on the other side, was expected to score 10 goals and actually ended up with 3 goals. This shows that he underperformed.
My full visualisation can be viewed here, where you can filter the plot by team and/or position.
This is a screenshot of all the strikers in the league and you can see that Mitrovic was in a league of his own. This is due to the fact that he only played 89 minutes and he was expected to be involved in nearly 2 goals. The fact is that he scored 1 goal and 0 assist for Newcastle last season before he got loaned out to Fulham.
A popular choice for a fantasy team would be Harry Kane. He was expected to have 0.2 secondary assists per 90 minutes and contribute to nearly 1 goal or assist a game (Next to Gabriel Jesus in the plot above). This proves that he should be a great investment, but there are maybe other options to look at as well.
As a fantasy player myself, this visualisation can be useful for this particular reason: You can see the ratio of each player’s goal contribution per 90 minutes. Per 90 minutes is a better metric than looking at overall contribution because a player can score 15 goals in 38 games while another player can score 15 in 25 games. The player scoring 15 in 25 is a more efficient player and a cost effective option.
Here is a visualisation of the midfielders.
Here is a visualisation of the defenders.
Thank you Stratabet for providing data and hopefully this will help you in winning your fantasy league!
This article was written with the aid of StrataData, which is property of Stratagem Technologies. StrataData powers the StrataBet Sports Trading Platform. StrataBet Premium Recommendations.
