How to select your daily fantasy football forwards
With the new Premier League season almost upon us there couldn’t be a better time to reignite the old-fashioned centre forward debate. Diego Costa certainly made an impact in his first season in England and not just for his goals. The Chelsea forward seemed to be looking to go to war every time he took to the field and it prompted a number of comparisons with forwards from bygone years.
The ever-green Kevin Davies is another forward who has never been afraid to put himself about. When discussing Davies, former Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp once said:
He's a proper centre-forward. He's excellent, he just knows how to play."
It seems fair to say that forwards take a battering from time to time and therefore need to be able to handle themselves but our main concern as managers is what exactly constitutes a good value fantasy football forward? To be able to answer this we again need to look at all the criteria by which forwards can earn or forfeit points. These will vary from game operator to game operator but might in addition to goals scored include assists, fouls won, fouls committed, shots on target, cautions, pass completion and so on. The following case study which focuses on the English Premier League strikers provides useful tips for you to consider when making your selections and should ensure that you are picking high scoring forwards who offer the best value for money. The same procedures can be applied regardless of which site you choose to play at.
Case Study 1e - Mondogoal Forwards
To initiate this process we have categorised the different ways Mondogoal forwards can accumulate points based on their scoring matrix:
Goals (GLS)
Attacking Contribution – Assist, shots on target (and missed penalty kicks) (AC)
Discipline – Yellow cards, red cards and fouls committed (DIS)
Regular Play - Fouls won, minutes played and passes completed (REG)
Defensive duties have been ignored and even though you will often here that old adage about defending from the front we feel that the scoring system is fair. The following pie charts compare consistency (CON) which is regular play and discipline aggregated, goals scored and other attacking elements for ALL games played as well as the Top 25 players in terms of average points per game and the best 2 performing forwards (Sergio Agüero and Diego Costa) up to and including round 37 of the 2014/15 season:
2010 - present
2010 - present
The general pattern suggests a fairly equal distribution across the 3 groups. The greatest fluctuations seem to be with the goals scored and there is a tendency for the higher ranked forwards to see a bigger proportion of their average points make up being accumulated as a result of hitting the back of the net.
The following graph shows a clear correlation between the salary cap and the average points per game of the Top 20 ranked forwards with a minimum of 10 appearances for the same time period:
This graph enables you to predict how a forward should be valued so can be used as an aid for determining value for money if you like to forecast how many points you believe a player will earn on any given match day.
One concept worth bringing up at this point is the significance of standard deviation, a great indicator of a player’s reliability or erratic behaviour. Consistent performers will suit most events whereas knowledge of players who have the potential for big score fluctuations can come in handy in large field tournaments. Harry Kane, for instance set the Premier League alight last season but with approximately 45% of his points make-up down to goals scored as indicated in the following table which focuses on the Top 20 forwards ranked by average points earned from goals scored he is one player who would have a fairly high standard deviation. This is something we will look at in more detail in future articles but a reflection of how consistent his scoring is likely to be. His inclusion or not will probably boil down to the type of contest you are entering into as well as the other key points highlighted later.
To conclude with here are some key indicators to look out for when selecting your forwards:
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Team expectancies come to the forefront but try to gauge what percentage of a team’s goals a forward might contribute and what the predicted number of goals is for his team in this fixture compared with their goal average.
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Watch out for players who give more than they get especially if the fixture looks volatile and a high card count is predicted.
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Understand the specific traits of each player. Do they have a high shot frequency, like to run with the ball or have any set-piece responsibility?
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Some forwards will perform much better in home games than they do in away games so factor this in if it applies. Defoe was a classic example in his early career at Spurs.
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