Player Analysis: By The Numbers Week 31
It’s always a strange week when there are so few matches to concentrate on. You expect that everyone will have similar teams because of the smaller pool of players and it therefore be a difficult week to move ahead in any of your leagues – not so. I had organised my transfers for the official game over the preceding weeks to ensure that I should have a good stab at things and I managed 64 points, which is good although I’m seriously regretting not captaining Kane.
You’d expect the situation to be intensified in the Perfect XI game because it’s always a fresh slate. Again, I chose a team that I figured most would and I managed to come 25thout of all of the entries. Very weird. That puts me up to 6thin the Rotoworld League with fellow Rotoworld writers Nik Agiropoulos and Neal Thurman still ahead of me (I’m closing Nik). It also put me up to 37thin the overall game – if I can make the top 25 at the end of the season I’ll be very happy. Of course, that means making up about 60 points on all of those players above me which won’t be easy.
The frustration for everyone of course is not knowing when the double game weeks will be kicking in – there are only 8 left after all. The only thing that we do know is that United and West Ham will be missing week 35.
From a slightly different viewpoint, I actually played the pools last week for the first time in my life. It seems antiquated to many people and it’s a long way away from its heyday but it was actually kind of fun – does anyone else ever have a go at it? I’m going to play it some more over the next couple of weeks and I’ll be putting my experience, and the approach I chose on my website if anyone’s interested. I also wondered what reader’s thoughts were on the upcoming Euro 2016 finals? Readers of my website will know about my Euro 2016 Betting approach but I wondered how readers thought the individual teams may do.
So, whilst I still have the slightly easier task of working out the stats for a single week, let’s have a look at the predictor
Predictor
Well, I can honestly say that I can never remember West Brom being the team that is selected as the most likely to win. 71% is a huge percentage and its driven by Norwich conceding and average of 2 goals more than they’ve scored over their last 6 away games. This is of course mostly driven by 3-0 losses to Spurs and Bournemouth but it is still pretty damning stuff.
Next comes the Manchester Derby and I have to say that it looks a sky blue affair this year. United are improving but they’ve hardly set the world alight have they. It’s interesting that they have the same chance as a team like Swansea have of beating Villa. Of course, everyone has their thoughts about these teams but luckily my spreadsheet has no memory and only works with facts. Spurs look good value at home to Bournemouth and I would certainly expect to see Mr. Kane continue well after his two goals yesterday.
For those of you who want a bit of fun, you could choose some players from the Newcastle vs. Sunderland derby – just expect to see red cards.
Poisson
This is more like it – there’s actually some games with good likelihoods of games. In fact, only two games appear routed down in the 0-0 corner of the grid, Watford at home to Stoke and West Brom at home to Norwich. The funny bit for most readers is that the Poisson has highlighted Aston Villa as one of the teams most likely to keep a clean sheet – who’d have thought? In fact, the most likely outcome is a Villa win although it roughly the same as Swansea winning or drawing. Personally I have Fabianski available for goal and in spite of what the Predictor says, I’ll be playing him.
The Poisson suggests that if you want to avoid certain defences then United, Arsenal and Palace are the ones and I can’t argue with that. Personally I wonder if two of the most attack minded defenders of the season might be worth chancing your arm with – Van Aanholt and Van Dijk. Who’d bet against them even if they are both playing away.
