FPL Gameweeks 5–8: Change of plans
First of all, if you’re reading this and have been following along in the series so far, I’d like to make an apology. Gameweeks 5–8 analyses were supposed to come out a few days before but I couldn’t make them in time due to some personal commitments. I didn’t anticipate the Friday deadline for Gameweek 5 & 8 and I had some exams to focus on. So apologies but I hope all of you have been successful in the team selections. Instead of cramming them in on time quickly, I figured it would be better to put out articles that had value even though they were a bit late to the party.
State of things
Moving on, let’s take a look at these past Gameweeks. If you noticed, we had 12 teams draw in Gameweek 5. Gameweek 6 saw things return to more of a normality, still the high goal-scoring madness we saw in the first few Gameweeks seems to have cooled down. Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United are all below the top 10 of the table. Gameweek 7 saw James Ward-Prowse score two freekicks in a single game!
Aston Villa are turning into the Wolves of last year as they keep on taking down the big guns, the latest victim being Arsenal.
If we take a look at the most points scored for each part of the field so far, we can gather some interesting notes.
- Just from this data above, without doing any analysis, we can see that you don’t see the most points gathered by the strongest teams — in fact, Aston Villa have 4, Southampton has 4, West Ham have 3, the only strong team represented being Chelsea with 4 players as well.
- Apart from Kane, forwards do not bring in much value to the team, although certainly more than defenders and goalkeepers. Luckily we had Kane in our team, but this could easily have been a disaster with some forwards scoring even less than defenders.
Being the crazy season that this has been, we are expecting even more as we further along. This international break coming up is a welcome relief for many FPL Managers to tinker with their teams. Earlier in the season, I did speak of a change around this time if needed based on the points we accumulated. So let’s see how we did.
Gameweek 5
- If you read my last article, you know how impressed I was with Ben Chilwell - and that’s exactly what I did for this Gameweek. Bring in Chilwell for the unused Toby Alderweireld.
- I had brought in Werner a week before and we talked about his productivity bound to come and he did so with a solid 16 pts.
- Both Keane and Kane produced valuable numbers as well for a very productive week after a few slow ones. However, I was still stuck with an injured Van Dijk and Soyuncu.
Gameweek 6
- Gameweek 6 was an odd one in terms of who scored points. The Gameweek average reduced to 48 points.
- If you notice the subs, Kasper Schmeichel scored 10 points which would have been so valuable to the score versus the measly 2 from Rui Patricio.
- Surprisingly, no changes were made this Gameweek and this was not intentional but an error on my part as they had an earlier deadline for team selections. Besides Kane and Chilwell who finally revealed his value, we have very few other solid contributions. A week to forget.
Gameweek 7
- Chilwell continues to impress with another solid 6 points. Barnes finally produces an outcome after two weeks of non-show. James Maddison coming back into the Leicester line-up has really hurt his output. Both Kane and Werner impress too.
- Our decision to keep Jota around has proved to be valuable as well as he continues to impress in the Liverpool team despite the presence of Roberto Firmino.
- Changes incoming with two- out goes Richarlison and Van Dijk and in comes Bamford and Saiss.
Gameweek 8
- Chilwell puts in another solid performance against Southampton with a goal. However, bringing in Saiss has not been productive with 0 points for both Gameweeks.
- The midfield fails to impress as well with most of our points coming from attack. Bamford transfer plays out well for us with a goal, which could have been two goals.
- We miss out on 10 points with Patricio in the subs.
- The only addition being Heung-Min Son for the undervalued Lucas Moura.
Why these players?
- Injuries (Virgil Van Dijk, Çağlar Söyüncü) - One of the main reasons for our transfers have been purely due to unfortunate circumstances beyond our control. Season-ending injuries are a rarity so while these will affect our results, we will just assume these to be expected outcomes during a normal season.
- Lack of selections (Toby Alderweireld, Lucas Moura) - Last season, these two players were extensively used in their squads. However, due to the lack of pre-season and extended Transfer windows, and the larger amount of games played over a shorter period, such players who otherwise may have been chosen were not.
- Offensive actions (Richarlison)- One of our players were also taken out for receiving a 3 match ban. Such circumstances can be expected as part of a regular season.
So as you can see, none of our transfers were based on data but rather forced upon us by circumstances. As far as the players that came in, we chose those that have been producing the most amount of form over the past Gameweeks.
Where do we go from here?
Before the next Gameweek, I’ll be putting out another article that describes our strategy going forward. If we will stick with the current team we have or if changes will be made based on certain factors. Stay tuned for that one.
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
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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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