FPL Gameweek 4: Demolition [activated]
It’s been two weeks since Gameweek 4 and I think no one is still over how crazy it was. This season itself has been a roller-coaster combining unprecedented events all over the place - Covid-19, crazy score-lines, lack of fans, giants being slayed; what’s next? Leeds win the league?
Gameweek 4 saw two giants in Manchester United and Liverpool get slayed. bad.. I mean embarrassingly bad. You think 6–1 is rock-bottom but then you get slapped in the face. 7–2 still doesn’t sound real. It was a joy to watch for all neutrals and nightmares on cloud 9 for fans of these camps.
Ofcourse with these crazy results, some very particular FPL players have benefited and many have not. Definitely if you had players from Tottenham or Aston Villa in your team.
Gameweek 4 Total Points
Thankfully, the crazy results haven’t completely gone against us. We were able to stay within the averages of the Gameweek. From a perspective of winning, these results don’t look impressive but considering the crazy trajectory of this season, it’s quite hard to compare it to a regular season. Regardless, our aim is to gain valuable info week-by-week and try different strategies with the help of data to try to do considerably well by mid to late season. If we can achieve that goal, then we can consider this a valid experiment given the circumstances.
Never did I anticipate getting a -2 for Virgil Van Dijk, but here we are. Our only savior over the weekend (and really the season so far too) has been Harry Kane. We made the right choice to also captain him as well. If we hadn’t done so, this would have been a no-good, terrible weekend and one to forget and move on from.
Our Changes
We did indeed make one change to our team in Timo Werner. This was a real head-scratcher. I was facing two weeks of unproductive return from Anthony Martial and it was time to cut our losses quick. I was perplexed on whether to swap him or our next worst Points return candidate in Çağlar Söyüncü. Given that Martial was playing Tottenham, I made the decision to choose to remove Anthony Martial (in addition to the Fixture Difficulty).
This was a welcome change as we somehow dodged a bullet. Martial goes on and gets a red card in the Tottenham game!
With regards to who to put in for Martial, it was a difficult choice. Costing £8.9, he was an expensive addition to the team. There were some quality expensive signings we could replace him with or we could consider a cheap buy as well.
I decided to take a look at the defenses of teams. If we want a solid forward, we want him to go against defenses that are weak and allow great penetration. The above spread shows teams that aren’t particularly the strongest squad-wise in the Premier League (so mid-tier teams like Leeds) but those with great defenses. We could see from this that our attackers should probably not face Leeds, West Ham, Arsenal or Fulham.
Our understanding from this was validated as Leeds drew with Manchester City, Fulham only lost 1–0 to Wolves and both West Ham/Arsenal won their respective games. Hence, we wanted attackers who didn’t face these teams over atleast 2–3 Gameweeks. The safest option came in the form of Chelsea. And so we chose Werner. Chelsea won their game 4–0 against Crystal Palace but Werner failed to make an impact. We hope that this changes over the coming weekends.
Looking forward to Gameweek 5
This coming Gameweek is hopefully a turnaround for us. I’ve been thinking about when to apply the First Wildcard. One of the common tendencies is to jump ship with a new team. In our preliminary analysis, we said we would consider a switch after Gameweek 6 and I’m going to stick with that strategy for the moment and wait in patience.
Looking at our team and the above fixtures, we do have some issues and possible areas where we could get a few points.
- Söyüncü is injured at the moment so a replacement for him is one of the areas of concern. Cezar Azpilicueta’s fate despite his stellar points return seems to be as a substitute this season so he is also a waste of resources at the moment. Oh, and Toby Alderweireld does not seem to play at all.
- Spurs are awaiting the retirn of Gareth Bale. Lucas Moura seems to play in a similar position. This weekend will tell if he will continue to play or not.
- We have conflicting clashes in Everton vs Liverpool involving 4 of our players so we need to decide who to shift to the bench and who to keep on the field.
So, a lot of things to consider. The season has officially started and the issues have naturally started to appear. Let’s hope they clear themselves in a Gameweek or two.
Value Picks for Gameweek 5
Let’s take a look at FPL Player data and see the updated player selection. Based on this data and GCA90 (Goal creating Actions per 90), we get the following spread.
- While not all these players may seem like good value, let’s look more closely at what we did here. We’ve highlighted just those players who have be selected by less than 5% of players and who have contributed the most.
Our Value Pick: Jack Harrison £5.5, 16 pts. Facing Wolves | Ross Barkley £ 5.9, 9 pts. Facing Leicester, Involved in 7–2 win against Liverpool.
2. Earlier, we took a look at who may have the best odds of taking a penalty. Now that we may have a better idea, let’s take a look at who may bring the best value for money from both Penalty and Non-Penalty goals.
The further right and higher we go, the better.
Our Picks: Callum Wilson £6.4. 34 pts. Wilson seems like the best value-for-money at the moment. He is in a decent team and has a sharp eye for goal as well, Facing Manchester United | Harry Kane £10.6. 44 pts. While not a value pick, At 44 pts, Kane brings incredible value to the team, Facing West Ham.
Alright that’s all for this week! Good luck in your picks and let’s hope for a good Gameweek. Catch you all next week.
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
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And there we go! Hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I did writing it. Feel free to write down any thoughts or suggestions. I’m always working on improving my analysis 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, feel free to reach out to me personally. If you would like to follow me to keep up with updates in this series, follow me here or — — @__tomthomas
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