Differentiators

So, a key concept of the Fantasy Football game is that of Player Differentiators…

Firstly, what is a player differentiator?! Well, our understanding would be that, especially when chasing a leader in your mini-league, in order to catch-up and overtake you’ll need to have some different players to your opponent(s).

Alternatively if you are at the top of your league you’ll likely want to ensure your team is full of the same players as those just below you, in order to protect your lead.

So, with the above in mind we’ve released a new visualisation on our Player Stats Portal called Differentiators and found on Page 9 :-

To fit all the data on screen the report is in two parts, Goalkeepers and Defenders together on one page and Midfielders and Strikers on the next. Click on the Button at the bottom to toggle between the two.

On the left side of the page you have a Top N of the % Picked By data item across a defaulted last seven week period. On the right hand side of the page is the same Top N but this time showing the Weekly Points. To summarise, left hand side shows the most popular player picks with gamers and how this is changing over the weeks, right hand side shows the best performing players.

Focusing firstly on Goalkeepers, we can see the top two performing keepers for weeks 1 to 7 are N. Pope (£4.1m) and R. Roefs (£2.6m). Neither of these two players appear on the Top 5 – % Picked By tab though…

If you click on the player name(s) you can see their corresponding % Picked By stats:-

We can see that Pope is in just 3% of teams, up from 2% in the very early weeks. Roefs was in hardly any gamers teams to begin with but now resides in just 2% of gamers teams.

So, basically either of these two would represent good Differentiators to your rivals. Of course we can’t guarantee they’ll maintain this form so, all the other variables need to be considered, in particular forthcoming fixture difficulty/cup appearances but, this can be seen on the Portal too of course e.g. Fixtures on Page 6 :-

So, concept understood, looking at Defenders the likes of J. Timber (£4.3m), D. Burn (£3.7m) and M. Keane (£2.8m) are some other good differentiators, currently in 11%, 4% and 2% of teams respectively:-

For Midfielders we’ve picked out Team of the Season member and cheap enabler, J. Anthony (£2.8m) with gamers gradually warming to him but still only 3% Picked By on last data update:-

For Strikers it is the well priced I. Thiago (£3.6m) who stands out, he’s the second highest points scoring Striker but in just 4% of teams, although gamers are bringing him in quite quickly now:-

And, finally please note you can also adjust the Week Slider at the bottom of the page e.g. to examine last 4 week form here as opposed to 7 :-

Burn was highlighted earlier but 4 week form also highlights J. Gvardiol (£4.6m) as a differentiator to consider, one of last seasons top performers he’s only in 6% of gamer’s teams and has scored 21 points in his last four games, with City now also having a favourable run of fixtures…

Any feedback as always welcome via the comments – check in at the end of the week for an Injury status update and we’ll catch ya again in next weeks blog to look at the Week 8 results… 😊