So we’re back from the international break and we’ve had some injuries as per normal; Manchester United may have lost another defender in Jones, Sterling is at risk for Liverpool and Jovetic looks set to miss out for the blue side of Manchester. On the plus side, Welbeck appears to have silenced the critics regarding his last-minute move to Arsenal.
It’s an interesting week this week as there are loads of unknown new players that can easily put a spanner in your fantasy plans, so we’re going to go back to the betting markets in the hope that those pesky bookmakers have their odds in order.
Firstly, the goalkeeper results for this week, here’s the graph:
The first thing that stands out to me is just how poor value players like Szczesny, Hart, Mannone, Fabianski, Guzan and Hart are this week– I’m not saying that they’re bad players but the sheer difference between their expected chances of success and their cost is enormous!
The clear favourites are Courtois, Speroni and Forster (One of those players I never expected to mention!). I think that the majority will already have Courtois as a season keeper and at his current price he’s still definitely worth grabbing. Of course, Chelsea take on Manchester City next week so you might see a price reduction after that week. A couple of keepers are close to contention; Mignolet, De Gea and McGregor but I’d keep your eyes on the first three especially is Jones is injured for the weekend…
I thought I’d have a look this week at extending the approach I’ve been using successfully for goalkeepers to other positions (177% ROI). Many of you will recall that we chose the betting markets of “To win to nil” and “to keep a clean sheet” because they emulated factors that we look for in fantasy football goalkeepers. For other positions however the things we look for; successful crosses, assists, interceptions etc. don’t get reflected in normal markets – The only market that could potentially be of use is goal-scorer focused markets.
If you look at the traditional markets of “to score at any time”, “first goal-scorer”, “last goal-scorer” etc there are literally hundreds of players on the same odds. I suspect this is because the bookmakers know that every week players from midfield and defence pop-up and score a goal or two and this protects them against that cost. The first place you do find any true difference in price is when you move to the “to score a hat trick market”.
I should explain now that the odds of scoring a hat-trick are extremely low and I’m not actually looking to predict this outcome. What I’m looking for is a way of comparing the goal-scoring probabilities of a group of players and then comparing those against their price. I found that there are 13 players that the bookmakers thought worthy of giving odds of better than 33-1. Unfortunately, I suspect a number may not play but this early on in the week with new transfers available and some players coming back from international duties, I have included them anyway. So the chart for attacking players is:
What you’re looking for is players where the blue line reaches (or preferably breaches) the orange line. This doesn’t of course mean that they’re more likely to score more goals but they’re more likely to score more goals for a cheaper price than other players. So who’s of interest? The names in the frame are: Remy, RvP, Balotelli, Costa, Schurrle, Falcao and Drogba. Looking at the graph closely, and taking into account likely starting squads, I think that a forward three of Balotelli, Costa and Falcao could be extremely formidable (I’m going to go with it).
Please note that Schurrle figured in this top collection of players and is listed as a midfielder – sounds good to me. Other midfielders who were listed at odds of no higher than 40/1 were:
Hazard, Fabregas, Mane, Mata, Lallana and Markovic. As these players obviously have a goal scoring pedigree then I wouldn’t blame anyone who looked to fill their midfield from this list.
Thanks everyone, I’ll see you next time.
