How to select your daily fantasy football defenders
Anyone who has played traditional fantasy football will know that a combination of clean sheets, assists and goals are that elusive staple diet most fantasy managers are seeking when selecting their defenders. However, there is far more to this playing position as Arsene Wenger once pointed out:
‘’When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding’’.
Tony Adams was a class act and he possessed many of the additional attributes that are now being handsomely rewarded by the more sophisticated scoring systems that we are seeing with the emergence of new daily fantasy football game operators. These ‘skill’ areas include tackling ability, aerial ability, clearances, blocks, interceptions, passing, discipline, the ability to read the game, organizational skills and so on. No matter which game you choose to play you need to have a thorough understanding of the significance of each skill, its likely frequency and resulting overall contribution to a defender’s scoring potential.
In the following case study we will look at these steps in more detail. We will go through the selection process to ensure that you are picking daily fantasy football defenders that provide the best value for money and we will include tips that can be applied regardless of which game operator you opt to play with.
Case Study 1c - Mondogoal Defenders
The first thing we need to do is to dissect and group all the relevant skill areas that defenders can earn points for or be penalized for based on Mondogoal’s scoring system:
Goals (GLS)
Attacking Contribution – Assists (and missed penalty kicks) (AC)
Defence – Clean sheets and single goal games (DEF)
Discipline – Yellow cards, red cards and fouls committed (DIS)
Regular Play –Tackles won, fouls won, minutes played, interceptions and passes completed (REG)
We were a little bit surprised that ‘interceptions’ were not given a higher value due to their infrequency and game reading importance but other than that the scoring criteria seems well-balanced and fair.
In the pie charts below we have omitted discipline (negative points) and compared the average points per game that each of the other skill groups collected throughout the course of this EPL season up to and including Week 37. We looked at ALL defenders, the Top 25 ranked by average points per game accumulated and the Top 2 defenders with the highest average PPG (Leighton Baines and John Terry).
The trends are quite obvious. Players from the top teams will generally pick up slightly more points for defensive duties while the significance of goals and attacking contribution is fairly negligible with the players most likely to earn points this way seeing it reflected in their inflated salaries. Without doubt though, the key scoring area is regular play – this is where the majority of points are earned. The ability to successfully win tackles or be fouled by clever positioning and attacking forays should not be underestimated. Once we add discipline into the mix we are able to gauge a player’s consistency (CON) since it gives us a good reflection of the combination of his regular play and controlled aggression.
In our introductory article we discussed our preference for the 3 man defence so how do we pick these 3 players on a weekly basis? Remember we think it makes more sense to use a bigger chunk of your budget on more offensive positions but understanding the correlation between player value and expected points per game shouldn’t be under-estimated either as illustrated in the following graph which shows the valuation of the Top 20 performing defenders based on average points per game:
2010 - present
2010 - present
Now you’re armed with the appropriate ammunition simply follow these steps to weed out good value defenders:
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Rank players for ‘consistency’ to see which ones are performing to a good level on a regular basis as shown in the table below
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Factor in goal concession expectancies to estimate each player’s points potential for any given fixture and cross-reference that with his team’s norm
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Look for players that might be under-valued for an upcoming game based on their predicted points for the fixture in question by comparing with the best-fit line in the graph above
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You need all your picks to start so make sure you are up-to-date on team news and by all means reference Know your team news - how to become an authority on daily fantasy football
If this seems a little overwhelming don’t worry as we include all the key information that you will need in the MLS/ EPL features that we produce each week.
Now that you have established the base of your team it’s time to move on and have a look at the more offensive positions which will play a more decisive role in determining your chances of ‘cashing’ in any given daily fantasy football contest.
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