EPL Fantasy GW6 Recap and GW7 Algo Picks
By: Dilyan Kovachev
Tags: Fantasy Sports, Predictive Analytics, Data Science, Soccer, English Premier League

Based on that formula, here is the list of the Top15 recommended captains for this GW. Lots of good options there, so not an easy choice by all means. For the first time in a while Salah is not the top choice, and the recommender thinks you should for Kane, Son, Mitrovic, KDB or Sterling and then Salah.

Predictive Models (Player Stats)

It’s time for the crown jewel of this year’s improved Algorithm — the predicted player stats. After we layer in all the FDR, bookie coefficient, ref starts, projected lineups and injuries, there are two major metrics that we take into consideration when tuning our Team Optimizer for the next n-gameweeks team selection — predicted total points and expected value (ROI). Below are the stats for each metric, also broken down by position.

Projected Total Points — Top 25 Players

Projected Points — Top Goalkeepers

Projected Points — Top Defenders

Projected Points — Top Midfielders

Projected Points — Top Strikers

As you can see there is a large number of options we can choose from for each position, so we will be plugging a lot of the stats above into an Optimization Function in Python, which will output the team with the highest expected total points, given our budget constraints and other metrics that go into our decision making process. Some of the preliminary filters, applied before the Team Selector Code kicks in, include:

Exclude Injured or Suspended players Exclude Players from teams with high FDR Exclude Players from Teams without Fixtures in GW1 Cannot have more than 3 players from the same team Must have 15 players total (GK=2, DF=5, MD=5, ST=3)

Optimize Budget for most used formation

Most used formation by Top100 players last week was 3–4–3, so we will present optimized team for that formation. As you can see below, the model first looks at parameters that tells it if it should optimize towards full squad of 15 players, or towards a specific formation with 11 key players and 4 cheap fillers. For the fillers, it first looks at preferred formation and uses that to decide how many fillers to get per position. The model then subtracts the total amount spent on the 4 fillers from our initial budget and spends the leftover budget on the key 11 players, given the optimization function and model constraints.

Example1: Optimize towards max expected points

Example2: Optimize towards max Expected Value (ROI)

With a few modifications from us — The Value team in this case looks pretty appealing and balanced and if you are worried about lots of injuries and rotations of key expensive players, then this approach could be a good way to protect yourself from that.

Our Team for GW7

We will always use our top scoring team from last week, and try to do maximum of 1–2 transfers. Since our team didn’t have a playing GK last week, we just made one transfer, which was to get Martinez for Adrian. For our captain we’re going with the top recommended player — Kane. It was hard to decide between Grealish and Jorginho for a MD to bench, but we’re hoping AVL will get more offensive plays at home vs SOU, then Jorginho getting another penalty or assist, so hopefully we don’t regret that.

Conclusion

The way the season has been going, we recommend shifting away from expensive defenders and trying to just have three mid-range defenders and stack lots of chips in midfield and offense, since it has been raining goals so far this season, and there is no indication that things might be slowing down anytime soon. Thanks for reading as always and good luck this week!