Well last week was a mediocre one at best for me as I rolled the dice and tried to make an assault on the overall global standings. I’m 300 points clear on my nearest rival in my own private league so I figured it’s time to start really taking some chances and seeing if I could get luck. That led me to have two Leicester defenders, a Crystal Palace defender and goalkeeper and Defoe in my forward three – maybe I should be happy that I didn’t finish with a negative score!
My predictions went pretty well last week too – I strongly suggested Speroni and he returned far more points than he cost (our standard benchmark). I also suggested 6 attacking players and as a group they averaged 8 points per player which is ok in my book.
So let’s look at this week’s predictions.
Goalkeepers
This week there are no less than six goalkeepers who pass the 32% chance of success benchmark; Ospina, Courtois, Forster, Hart, Lloris and Adrian. From that list, only Ospina seems too expensive to justify his inclusion. Of the remaining five I personally like Hart with his home game against West Brom although Lloris took a significant battering against Man United so he could be worth scooping up after losing 1.51m from his purchase price. Personally I’m planning on going with the idea I had a couple of weeks ago and scooping up Forster at £9m. It’s quite expensive but he can just be forgotten about with this closing schedule: Burnley, Everton, Hull, Stoke, Spurs, Sunderland, Leicester, Aston Villa and….City (last minute swap?).
Predictor
Week 30 isn’t as strong as it ordinarily is with 54% the highest ranking team (we’re regularly into the 60’s). It’s interesting that the predictor suggests that Tottenham have just as much chance of success as City which is certainly of interest if you like a bet as Tottenham have higher odds. Arsenal have a strong chance away but I always have concerns predicting away teams even on such a mismatch as this. If I had to select a few attacking players this week then I’d highlight Aguero who’s down to just 15.99 and will want to make up for losing 1-0 to the lowest team in the league, Kane who whilst expensive should show Leicester a thing or two, Schneiderlin, Downing and Giroud (he’s down me well the last two weeks).
Poisson
This weekend’s Poisson predictions show generally some low scoring matches and it’s interesting that even the strongest clean sheet probability, for Manchester City, is only 54% - hardly conclusive. The poisson differs from the predictor in that it gives no extra credit for home teams so you’ll note that Swansea, Chelsea and Arsenal are all forecast to do well on their travels. It’s interesting that Hull are likely to get a goal past Courtois and even more that City are likely to score so well without home team advantage being taken into account – Aguero and Hart look equally good choices.
See you next week.
