How to select your daily fantasy football midfielders
The first thing to note when contemplating your midfield selections is that they come in a variety of guises. This is somewhat different to the other positions where players tend to have a clearly defined function. We discussed the role of the deep-lying play-maker in Hidden Treasure - the classic 'Number 4' but the list of midfield choices will also contain wide players and box-to-box midfielders such as Paul Scholes who Zinedine Zidane, the former France International, once praised by saying:
"My toughest opponent? Scholes of Manchester. He is the complete midfielder."
The Ginger Prince was certainly special and possessed many of the attributes that daily fantasy football providers are now including in the scoring mechanics of their game. To evaluate which midfielders offer the best value for money it is imperative that you first get a firm grasp of the scoring system so that you can gauge which skills to focus on. This will differ from game operator to game operator so make sure you have a thorough understanding of your sites rules. Things to look out for include tackling ability, pass completion, playing time, shots on target, fouls drawn and so on and the following Mondogoal case study focuses on the English Premier League and will provide tips on how to evaluate which daily fantasy football midfielders offer the best value for money as well as providing key selection pointers. These are procedures that can be applied to any game regardless of operator.
Case Study 1d - Mondogoal Midfielders
Tackling ability was perhaps the only weakness in Paul Scholes repertoire resulting in some needless cautions from time to time so we were a little surprised that ‘tackles won’ was not included in the Mondogoal’s scoring matrix for midfielders but apart from that we have no objections. We’ve categorized points scoring for this specific position into sectors as follows:
Goals(GLS)
Attacking Contribution – Assists, shots on target (and missed penalty kicks) (AC)
Defence – Clean sheets and single goal games (DEF)
Discipline – Yellow cards, red cards and fouls committed (DIS)
Regular Play –Fouls won, minutes played and passes completed (REG)
In the following pie charts we have aggregated general play and discipline to make up a consistency rating (CON) and have compared this against all the other skill areas midfielders can earn points for. They cover ALL games played during the 2014/15 EPL season up to and including Week 37, the Top 25 players based on average points per game and the Top 2 performing midfielders based on average points per game - Eden Hazard and David Silva.
When we start to look closely at the engine room it becomes obvious that money management is really starting to come to the fore. We need to accommodate 4 or 5 players depending on our chosen formation so we need to work out the best way to achieve this. The following table shows in more detail the exact splits for each of the Top 20 performing midfielders up to and including Week 37 (Min 10 appearances, 2014/15 EPL):
Dissecting the distribution of points for the various skill areas of whichever game operator you choose to play with enables you to come up with a strategy for selecting your key midfielders. In the case of Mondogoal it is clear that regular play has a huge influence on a midfielder’s performance.
It is outperforming both ‘goals scored’ and ‘attacking contribution’. In the case of Eden Hazard he has excellent dribbling ability which enables him to draw fouls and coupled with the fact that he is a well-disciplined player results in a consistency rating that comprises almost half of his average points. This is repeatable but if you decide to use such a big portion of your budget on one player sacrifices will have to be made elsewhere. The following graph gives you a good overview of expected points per game against salary cap:
The key to midfield selection lies in combining the ratings with the contest fixtures themselves. Consider these points when making your picks:
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Team goal expectancies immediately come to the fore. Look for teams that are expected to score more than their average and concede less than their average. This is a great indicator of a favourable fixture whereby players who contribute regularly in terms of goals, assists and shots on target will see a correlation implying that they are more likely to rack up healthy tallies under these game conditions. Likewise, defensive ability should not be overlooked either due to the bonus points on offer.
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Many sides are now lining up with 433 formations with some players that are classed as ‘midfielders’ filling one of these advanced forward positions. Take note of these and familiarise yourself with players who have set-piece responsibility as well.
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If the fixture looks volatile you may wish to avoid certain ill-disciplined midfielders.
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Try to understand the traits of each team. If a team is expected to monopolise possession certain individuals may rack up some easy points by getting on the ball more frequently than they would in a more balanced fixture.
There is plenty to digest but we cover the midfield selection process in all of our MLS and EPL Hotcard features so feel free to reference those for more insight into this key line-up position.
On a side note it will take a few weeks for the new season to bed in and for ratings to be collated accordingly so you might want to use last season’s statistics during this overlap period.
Now it’s time to look at the goal-machines!
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