Mapping out the fixtures
Predicting football matches is an difficult task, but as we have done our best for our telegraph fantasy football guide.
We have used our PER (Player Efficiency Model) to predict the results of the first five games of the season. So are covering GW1-5 effectively.
It is ten days until the kick for the Telegraph Fantasy Football 25/26! So we have looked at the first five fixtures of the EPL season, and spoiler alert there are going to be some strong starts. With our five teams we want to capitalise on these strong starts to get the most points without having to use too many transfers.
The way the model works is that it picks out the unique players from each team and groups them together to give a team strength number. These players include players that played over 1500 minutes last season. The reason for 1500 is that it discards players which have a sample of games.
The strength points come from a number of metrics for each player and then grouped and averaged by club. This gives us a good idea of the strength of a team as we are at the moment. I do expect this to change before the season starts as one or two are in hot water as it stands.
I will continue to update my models with the transfers as we go along. Once I update them, I will update the stats below if there are any major swings. I should imagine there are going to be some major changes still.
Fixture Predictions
So let’s look at the top teams in the league. Now the way I have worked this is that every team has a strength rating according to the players and their metrics. I then challenge each team on the fixtures against each other and calculate the strength difference.
I then add the strength results together and give the team a strength rating over 5 fixtures or Telegraph Fantasy Football game weeks. It’s pretty easy to do at the point as most of the hard is done before this point after cleaning the data and putting is through the calculations.
Strong Teams
Arsenal (+984 Rating)
- Man United Away +200
- Leeds Home +340
- Liverpool Away -4
- Forest Home +440
- Man City Home +8
Chelsea (+1217 Rating)
- Palace Home +300
- West Ham Away +324
- Fulham Home +185
- Brentford Away +308
- United Away +100
Liverpool (+1334 Rating)
- Bournemouth Home +300
- Newcastle Away +200
- Arsenal Home -4
- Burnley Away +358
- Everton Home +480
Man City (+1072 Rating)
- Wolves Away +445
- Spurs Home +207
- Brighton Away +230
- Man United Home +180
- Arsenal Away -10
Aston Villa (+170 Rating)
- Newcastle Home -140
- Brentford Away +60
- Crystal Palace +60
- Everton Away +160
- Sunderland Away +30
Spurs (+265 Rating)
- Burnley Home +145
- Man City Away -200
- Bournemouth Home +100
- West Ham Away +190
- Brighton Away +30
Newcastle (+324 Rating)
- Aston Villa Away +140
- Liverpool Home -200
- Leeds Away +130
- Wolves Home +152
- Bournemouth Away +102
As you can see, this is a big difference between the top four teams and the next three. This is partly down to having better players, but also because of the home and away calculation. This emphasises how good these top teams are at home.
Again nothing is guaranteed, we can only see the data in front of us and how it works for us.
Telegraph Football Fantasy fixture tips
Looking at these fixtures you can see that Liverpool and Chelsea are the strongest two teams in the opening 5 fixtures. Chelsea look the better bet across the first 5 fixtures, whereas Liverpool have a tricky game against Arsenal.
This tells me that we could focus on defensive players with Chelsea and attacking players with Liverpool. This is because Chelsea are more likely to keep clean sheets. We could also look at Man City for defensive players for the first 4 games before switching it up when they play Arsenal in GW5.
Another team worth taking a look at is Newcastle after GW2. GW3-5 are looking very positive and if they can grab something from GW2 it’s only going to be better. The other problem is the Isak situation, has his head been turned or will he focus?
The other consideration is that the league cup counts this year and so the European teams join the competition in round 3. Obviously this will blend into our strategies for our five teams for daily Telegraph Fantasy Football 25/26.
Strategy
While it seems obvious that the top teams are the teams with the best chance, they should make up the core of your team. What I mean by this is that they should create a constant in your Telegraph Fantasy Football team and change the parts around them. It’s nothing new to build a team around the top clubs, the difference makers tend to come from the other clubs.
There are a few juicy fixtures here, but we can navigate our way through them and maximise our points. Obviously things may not work out all the time, just look at Man City last season, that really hurt my Telegraph Fantasy Football team last season.
Conclusion
We would be silly to ignore the fixture data when it picking our teams in the daily Telegraph Fantasy Football. it is important that we know how to manoeuvre our teams with the fixtures coming up, rather than dealing with them on a week by week basis. This will help us manage our transfers better and use them when we really need them.
I am genuinely excited to see how this project works out and then gather feedback from there. There will be changes going forward, but I will obviously write about them to give you some insight.
Next time I will be sharing my first draft teams using our two different models. This will be interesting to see how the data guides us.
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