Pre-Gameweek 1 update
The first of the regular-season newsletters
Welcome to Gameweek 1 of my regular “updates” series. These will be following a specific format that will be out at regular intervals and looking a broad range of topics, rather than the more specific ones that I’ve been putting out so far. The areas covered in this one are as follows:
Fantrax players: late pre-season risers / fallers
Interesting gameweek matchups
“Home League” Update
A reading list of interesting things (at the very bottom)
Welcome to the 2020/21 season
Transfer season and draft season are generally pretty intertwined. As long as there has been a transfer window, the emotional side of fandom, the excitement of who your team might sign and who they might sell only builds through the Summer. I’m confident most of us have, at some point or the other, got ourselves emotionally invested in a potential signing (or transfer saga). And players aren’t immune to the emotional response either:
Draft season is much the same, especially for those of us that end up sinking hours into preparing, planning, falling in and out of love with players only to see their ADPs jump or a real-life signing dipping their value. But here’s the thing about both transfer windows and draft season: they’re only a part of the story. We know that big signings flop, we know that injuries can ravage a squad and leave them floundering. We also know that a player that looked a sure thing at their draft position could bust and leave you down a high-draft pick.
In-season management is arguably more important than the draft, though it takes a different skill-set. This weekly article will look at a few things, to try to give you tools to navigate the season. I’ll cover players that are interesting in a Risers & Fallers section. I’ll look to FiveThirtyEight and betting models to identify Interesting Gameweek Matchups. And lastly, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and show an update on Leagues I play in so you can see the warts and all version of how I fail to take my own advice on a weekly basis!
Risers & Fallers
There are some pretty predictable Risers & Fallers here because of new-signings so I will focus on some of them (ignoring some of the more obvious ones as they’ve been covered to death on Twitter by the Community).
Draft / FAAB worthy names:
James Rodriguez looks set to drop in at somewhere third -fourth round, dropping any residual Gylfi Sigurdsson value the Iceland International held. There’s no reason to draft Gylfi now, unless you’ve got a bench spot you want warmed. Though it’s been a while since James has played a full season’s worth of minutes, he was very effective under Carlo before and his creativity could bump up outputs from Everton’s forwards players. Allan also arrived, which bumps the defence a bit, but I don’t think the midfielder himself is a man I’ll be targeting.
Kai Havertz is probably jumping straight into the late second Round of most drafts and adding an extra name into that Chelsea rotation (albeit an expected one for many weeks) will take minutes away from someone. Fantrax Analysts on Twitter and Chelsea fans alike each have picked their own view on who gets knocked down. Personally, I think it’s likely to hit Mason Mount and Mateo Kovacic relatively equally, for what its worth. But I think we will see different configurations depending on opponent and we may be about to add Lampard to Pep and Graham Potter in the “rotation headache” managerial category. The versatility of the signings Lampard has had added to his team mean that each week might be a pick 3 from 4 situation.
Ryan Fraser & Callum Wilson are getting the band back together in the North East. The nice thing is that they should both be usable week to week players. My word of caution is that Callum Wilson’s genuinely really great 2018/19 output was a big leap ahead of the year before or the year after (0.6 xG + xA per match in 18/19 versus a consistent 0.4 in the seasons either side). That’s still a good output level, but don’t get tempted into overpaying, especially as Newcastle aren’t particularly a more creative side than Bournemouth were when it comes to goal opportunities. If you pay a sensible price though, both of these players could contribute to a solid roster.
Quick Hits:
Matty Cash joined Aston Villa from Nottingham Forest. He looks an upgrade on Guilbert, and is probably free in your draft. Nice late grab. He’s not playing Week 1, as Villa are already taking an early rest. So this one isn’t returning instant value and you might want to wait until the midweek waiver run to grab him.
Matt Doherty moved to Spurs. Don’t expect it to up his ceiling. I’m not against taking him at the same spot as when he was at Wolves, but it’s possible his role is worse for Fantrax if he’s not playing in a role that’s as optimised for Fantrax points scoring (RWB -> RB is basically a backwards step in Fantrax points). He’s still good though.
Rodrigo (the first) moved to Leeds. He’s going quite high in ADP compared to his actual output on the pitch the last few seasons and I think that’s more a reflection of the forward pool, rather than his play. I’m not at all interested in him (though would love shares of Rodrigo II if he does sign). Let someone else in the league gamble on Rodrigo I. There will be better and safer picks in the range he’s going. If he has a Michu like season, then good for his owners. But even though Bielsa’s output in the Championship was quite “forward friendly”, I would advise you to not throw valuable draft picks at fairy tales.
Interesting Gameweek Matchups
Each edition, I’ll look at upcoming Gameweek matchups where I think that there’s something worth talking about. It’s mostly a way to get proven incredibly wrong on a regular basis by the chaos of single match variance. For anyone who is reading this after a Gameweek and wants to come back at me with a #IToldYouSo, I can be found on Twitter.
With Gameweek 1, the most notable aspect is that there are blanks. This is a big deal when it comes to drafting / trying to get a full eleven out onto the pitch. (As a piece of general advice, I wouldn’t really worry too much if you were to lose the first week, if you can accumulate more draft capital as a result). But it does mean that you don’t have Manchester City, Manchester United, Burnley, or Aston Villa players to call on in that first week. Now, if you somehow go KDB, Martial, Grealish, McNeil, you might as well write off week 1. But just take some solace that you’ll get a double Gameweek from these players to even this out. Sometimes accepting a weekly hit is worth it in the draft game. In terms of the fixtures that are happening, there are some I really like in this Gameweek and a couple stand out more than others.
Crystal Palace v Southampton is one. Palace had a -17.1 xGD last season, and though they seem to be picking up sensible reinforcements in the transfer market. But at the same time, new signings will need time to adapt into the team. Southampton on the other side of the coin, have returned a fairly stable squad (with a couple of additions being the main difference to the team that had rounded out the second half of 19/20 in good form). I’d be starting all my Southampton attacking assets and want no exposure to that Palace defence (did you really need to be told this?).
Brighton v Chelsea is an even more predictable second one. But it’s hard to do much with this information, as Chelsea play last in this Gameweek. We’ve not really seen much preseason action from Chelsea (except for a game against this very opponent: a 1-1 draw) so it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the starting lineups or who is/isn’t match-fit. I have a suspicion that it might be a gradual shift to Frank Lampard’s preferred starting 11. Werner is the only one that I would be 100% confident on starting of the new bunch (Ziyech would also have been high on this list but he picked up a knock in that preseason game and I’d be watching Frank’s press conference closely to see if there’s any news on this, if you own him). There’s an above zero chance that we might see Hudson-Odoi get a start in this one, but you’re probably not going to be able to pick him up unless you’ve got a Brighton or Chelsea player you’re willing to throw to the waiver wire.
Liverpool v Leeds is the final one, and this is a lot easier for Fantasy Managers for two reasons:
Does anyone not know what Klopp’s lineup is likely to be?
There are four games after this, so chances are if there are any shocks, you have substitute players that you could swap in.
I know Norwich gave Liverpool a good game last year in the opener and Leeds are probably better than Norwich, with Bielsa in charge and spending a lot of money on the squad, but I wouldn’t overthink it. Liverpool assets should be the premium ones in this Gameweek. I’d even go as far as to say that if you need to turn to waivers for a spot start, monitor to see if any surprise starters on the Liverpool side come in (say a Curtis Jones), you might get a single week of value out of him.
Home League Updates
My “home league” is a 10 man league, made up of people in the UK and Hong Kong (with a brief dalliance with Zurich) and has been running (with some slight tweaks to owners) since the halcyon Togga days (2015/16 I believe).
The league is run as a straight league format, with no playoffs. The majority of the league held a violent dislike of the playoff format, and it was voted into oblivion at the earliest opportunity. Though in that first season, I got away with drafting Alexis Sanchez, Sergio Aguero, Sadio Mane and Diego Costa through the first four rounds and sailed through the season, the league has dramatically improved year on year since, and it’s been a few years since the title has come my way. Our league scoring is slightly different to the Togga default, with points in place for Minutes Played (not overly sure why we do this one) and for Fouls Suffered (this one I like). This ever so slightly affects player value and, for a small number of players, it moves them up a few tiers (Grealish, Zaha, Ayew, in particular).
Our league hasn’t drafted yet (we cut it very fine and are drafting on the morning of the 12th) so for this edition of the update, I’ll just take a look at last year’s draft results, and discuss my team in particular, what went right, what went wrong and what I learned. This was our 2019/20 draft board. I was Team Aguero. Though I imagine it’s hard to see past Team KDB, the league was actually won by Team Salah with two games to spare:
What do I like about my draft?
The first three rounds were really strong and were it not for Pulisic missing a lot of time in the first half of the season, I think it was only bettered by the Kevin De Bruyne, TAA, Son-Heung Min team (what a team, even if slightly helped by rookie team Virgil Van Dijk).
There were some good speculative hits in getting Tammy Abraham, Emerson (for the first few weeks at least) and Pukki.
I didn’t go for a keeper until the last pick… Just maybe could’ve picked a better one.
What do I not like?
Round 7 was too early to start speculating, yet I went hard on it. Joao Cancelo (post-restart hero), Naby Keita, Emerson, Alexis Sanchez were all aiming at upside, but the team already had risk involved with the high picks of Pulisic and Abraham. Stable picks in those spots instead would’ve been a great foundation to support the high end talent on the roster.
Chilwell, Cancelo, Tierney, Emerson and Davinson Sanchez doesn’t look great as my defensive group with hindsight. It probably didn’t look great at the time either, outside of blinkered draft eyes. Chilwell was the only man with a defined and definite role.
I picked a human sieve to play in goal.
What do I take from this draft into this years?
Firstly, I did not put enough value into stable every-week starters in the mid-late rounds. This was a real problem. There were weeks where I had bench stashes that I felt were more valuable than the waiver players, but that were not starting more than one in every three games. This is down to bad roster construction through the draft. Not every pick has to be a “league winning pick” and a disciplined strategy will save you pain over the season.
Secondly, I liked my early round picks a lot. We all know that Sergio had injury issues and that Bobby struggled to score, but if this draft had happened 100 times, I think I’d have taken the same two names there 99 times. Process > outcome. The same is true when learning from this upcoming draft: if you’ve got a firm process by which you’re targeting players, don’t necessarily throw it out if it doesn’t work out in a season. Look to learn from it and adjust.
Lastly, of these drafted players, only Aguero, Firmino, Pulisic, Chilwell and Tammy remained on my team for the majority of the season. Trades and drops moved the others around. So it’s important not to over-react to a draft in a positive or negative way. It’s your starting position but there’s still a race to be had. (For those interested, I picked up players like Harvey Barnes, Ismaila Sarr, Todd Cantwell and a few others that ended up in and out of the roster most of the year).
That’s it for the first edition, looking ahead at the upcoming Gameweek 1. I look forward to sharing the next one, where we’ll be digesting that first Gameweek’s worth of output, looking at anything we’ve noticed / learned and sharing the results of this year’s home league draft. If you want to get it into your inbox, hit the Subscribe now button below.
Reading List
I’m going to list anything I’ve found particularly interesting / useful in here each time.
This proposed change to scoring. Probably too late for most leagues in this season, but definitely something worth thinking about for next…
Statsbomb previews are coming out team by team and these are vital reading both for real football and for trying to identify teams that might do above or below consensus expectations.
I’ll cover this in a bit of detail in the next update but EveryTeam_Mark on Twitter also published this reminder that Stats take a while to settle and it is usually wise to not be too reactive to early outliers.
