FPL Gameweek 17: Free Hit Time
We’ve arrived at one of the pivotal portions of our season. Free Hit. Due to schedule changes, less games are being played over the coming Gameweek and we need to capitalize on this weekend like many others will be.
It’s been a busy 2–3 Gameweeks with game after game, so the expected returns for FPL Managers were all over the place. We too suffered with underwhelming results. However, after a couple of weeks of non-return, we had a decent Gameweek.
Gameweek 17 Results
Notice that we did risk to make 3 transfers instead of 2. So actually, the total would be close to 74.
Kane and Son saved the day again with a great points return. Aston Villa against Manchester United was a tough bet. Even still, Coufal and Grealish brought in 13 points. Such points are so essential.
However, now we face a different task this weekend.
Only 12 teams play this weekend and we have to choose a 15 man team out these 12 teams. Considering that we are doing a Free Hit, we don’t have to worry about long term stability as the squad will be reset after this week.
So we have a bit more free reign on who to choose, expectedly the players with the best form in the team most probable to either score, defend well or keep a clean sheet.
Note: Up until now, I used to compile all my analysis in R. This week, we’re going to give Python a try. Normally, I tend to do this behind the scenes to show you just the results. But let’s try something differently today and go through the steps of reaching our goal. All data was scraped from the Fantasy Premier League website.
Let’s first see who’s all in the best form at the moment.
Forwards
So I filtered the data for just the 12 teams we have to pick from.
We could have simply sorted it via form. But I was not so sure if that would have been the most accurate way to sort so we’ve added an additional parameter based on a few calculations called realvalue. It seemed to represent the true value of a player more accurately.
Above, we have the table based on just form and here’s the table just based on a more accurate measurement.
You’ll see that Harry Kane jumps over Anthony Martial, McGoldrick drops below Wilson and so on. Even from a pure eye test, this seems to fit the bill of the performances so far.
The obvious pick is Harry Kane. We will have to peer over the rest.
PICK: Harry Kane
Midfield
Here too, we have an obvious pick in Fernandes (not typing his whole name here)
PICK: Bruno Fernandes
Defense
Really surprised to see Ben Mee top the charts. I did not expect that. I would have expected it to be Kieran Tierney or Roman Saiss, who is also a few points down in the list.
Goalkeeping
Team Selection
So since we have a free hit, we can also choose a really strong starting 11 and a really weak bench.
So ideally, we’re looking for 11 valuable players and 4 of the cheapest players we can find.
So let’s look at the cheapest players we can obtain from the 12 teams .
So as we can see, the cheapest options seem to be all defenders.
Now it would be straightforward and easy if we could go ahead and choose all 3 cheap options to be defenders. However, FPL requires you to field atleast 3 defenders in the starting 11. That leaves us with 2 options to choose in defense for the bench.
So let’s pick two defenders from the list. To maximize selection possibilites, let’s take a look at the schedule again.
We see several defenders with a value of 3.9 and one of 3.8.
We want to choose players from teams that wont play this week so that we can choose more starting 11 players from the same teams.
So for our bench we choose Douglas and Vokins. 2players unheard of till now.
PICK: Barry Douglas| Jake Vokins
Okay, now we look for the next cheapest category.
Filtering through the data to remove defenders, we get the following table.
We see that the next cheapest option is a Goalkeeper. Again, we want to choose a player who won’t play this week. We will choose the West Brom keeper David Button.
PICK: David Button
To speed things up, we did the same thing for Midfielders. The cheapest option we could find were players at 4.3
We chose Rekeem Harper from West Brom.
PICK: Rekeem Harper
That leaves us with 9 players to choose for the starting 11.
Let’s combine all the categories we saw so far to see who would be the players with the highest realvalue.
The list seems quite varied. We do see players from multiple positions. Bruno Fernandes sticks out like a sore, yet valuable thumb with a value of 106. The next closest competitor is at a paltry 73 points.
First, let’s choose Rob Holding. Ben Mee is a valuable option and would be for long term. However, Ben faces Man Utd and that doesn’t seem to forbode well for them. Rob is a valuable cheap option who’s cheaper than Tierney and as Arsenal face Crystal Palace, not an easy opponent but not United.
PICK: Rob Holding | 8 players left to choose
Next, we choose Bernd Leno. Why Bernd Leno? Again, we have the schedule in Leno’s favor. They face Crystal Palace while Pope and Areola face tougher teams. Hugo Lloris was third in the Goalkeeping table but he is far more expensive.
PICK: Bernd Leno | 7 players left to choose
Raheem Sterling is second in the charts but his fitness levels are up in the air at the time this article is being written. So we choose the next player in the list. Kevin De Bruyne.
PICK: Kevin De Bruyne | 6 players left to choose
Heung Min-Son is another great option that follows. His value is quite high and he can score at any moment. We have no worries such as when it comes to City if players will be chosen or not.
PICK: Heung Min-Son | 5 players left to choose
We go for John Stones in the back and the next best option for value in Saiss.
PICK: John Stones, Roman Saiss | 3 players left to choose
Lacazette did’n’t play this week in the FA cup so he is bound to play this weekend.
PICK: Alexandre Lacazette | 2 players left to choose
Everton’s forwards seem injured. Neto is always a dangerous player.
PICK: Neto | 1 player left to choose
Sheffield Utd despite a poor start, seem to be back on the rise. David McGoldrick get’s a shot.
PICK: David McGoldrick
There we go.
Gameweek 18 Team
Thank you for taking your time to read through this. If you’d like to follow along in this series, here is a timeline of the FPL data analytics project.
1. Introduction
2. Gameweek 1
3. Gameweek 2
4. Gameweek 3
5. Gameweek 4
6. Gameweek 5–8
7. Gameweek 9–10
8. Gameweek 12–13
9. Gameweek 14
10. Gameweek 15
11. Gameweek 16
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And there we go! Hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I did writing it. I’m always working on improving my work flow and my articles as time goes on so I appreciate all comments! Collaborating is fun so if you’ve got any interesting projects in mind or even if you’ve got any constructive feedback or just want to connect, feel free to reach out to me personally @__tomthomas
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