On the heels of some fantastic and helpful defensive rotation articles by both FFS contributors (e.g., see Roscola’s Leicester and Southampton and (the prolific!) Paul’s rotation series on Stoke and Swansea, Newcastle and Sunderland, Crystal Palace and West Ham, and Burnley and Hull) and by active FFS community members (e.g. Portsmouth Bubblejet’s Premier League 2014/15 Home and Away Rotation and The Sarjeant – 471-68331’s Rotation: Home and Away v Fixtures), I want to add some additional perspective to the existing rotation talk.
BACKGROUND
Rather than populate my back-line with two cheap rotation pairs and one heavy-hitting defender from the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Man United, etc., in most years I tend to go with two to three defensive heavy hitters from the Top 5 or 6 teams. Well, in anticipation of moving in this same strategic direction for the coming 2014-15 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season, I’ve been searching for a couple of budget defenders who a) can fill in for my heavy hitters during those eight or so GWs when they face other Top 4-5 teams, and b) may in fact rotate fairly well with one another thus giving me the option of playing a back four if/when desired or needed.
Personal disclaimer: In my eight seasons of playing FPL I’ve never won the FPL title. My best ever rank is 1325 and my eight-year average rank is 40,310, but in eight seasons I’ve finished outside of the Top 100,000 only once. My FFS HoF position is 431 for a HoF rating of 92.22.
METHOD
Don’t worry, I’ve got solid numbers in an Excel spreadsheet to back up the team rankings included in the Results section below, but I thought including the raw data in this article would serve to confuse and complicate rather than to clarify. Basically, I used the uber-helpful FFS Members Season Ticker with which to derive numeric values and assign them to individual team fixtures. For example, according to the Season Ticker, Chelsea have difficult fixtures during Gameweeks 5, 7, 9, 11, 23, 33-34, and 36. Using the Ticker, I simply sorted the fixtures for GW5 from weakest to strongest. The weakest fixture was QPR v stk (thus QPR earned a score of “1” for that fixture), the second weakest fixture was NEW v hul, (thus NEW earned a score of “2” for that fixture), the third weakest fixture was SUN v bur (thus SUN earned a score of “3” for that fixture), and so on. In Chelsea’s case, I did this numerical assignment for every fixture in Gameweeks 5, 7, 9, 11, 23, 33-34, 36, and then put them all into one big spreadsheet and let a couple of basic formulas crunch the numbers for me. I told my spreadsheet to output the team rankings from ‘lowest’ to ‘highest,’ as the lowest rankings would indicate the most favorable set of fixtures. I then took steps to correct the rankings according to the total number of fixtures in which they matched up with the heavy-hitting team in question (this correction is reflected in the overall team-by-team rankings seen below by creating three levels of ‘BEST’ for each heavy-hitting team).
RESULTS
So, if/when looking for a budget-oriented player to occasionally stand in for one of your heavy-hitting defensive stalwarts from the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Man United, and Tottenham, look no further than the results below. I say ‘stand in’ because in this community article I’m not putting forth a true defensive ‘rotation’ strategy. In other words, this tactic is not about weekly defensive rotation; instead, it’s about finding budget-oriented players who can fill in for one of your heavy-hitting defenders from Top 4-5 sides if/when desired or needed.
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR AN ARSENAL DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 8 of Arsenal’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): LEI, WHM, NEW, BUR, SUN, HUL
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 7 out of 8 of Arsenal’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): TOT
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 8 of Arsenal’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): STO, QPR
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR A CHELSEA DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 8 of Chelsea’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): NEW / BUR (tied), SOT, STO
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 7 out of 8 of Chelsea’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): TOT
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 8 of Chelsea’s more difficult fixtures: LEI / QPR (tied), HUL, SUN, CPL, SUN / SWA (tied), WBA
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR A MAN UNITED DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 8 of Man United’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): SOT, TOT, STO, AVL
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 7 out of 8 of Man United’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): LEI
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 8 of Man United’s more difficult fixtures: SUN, CPL, SWA, WHM, QPR, BUR
GOOD TO GREAT OCCASIONAL FILL-IN FOR A TOTTENHAM DEFENDER
1st BEST
The following teams offer coverage of all 10 of Tottenham’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): NEW
2nd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 8 out of 10 of Tottenham’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): SWA, CPL, WBA, SUN, AVL, QPR
3rd BEST
The following teams offer coverage of 6 out of 10 of Tottenham’s more difficult fixtures (in rank order): SOT, WHM, BUR, HUL, STO, LEI
APPLICATION EXAMPLE
Let’s say you decide to begin the fast-approaching season by selecting three heavy-hitting defenders from the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham — for example, let’s say 5.5-priced Debuchy, 6.0-priced Luis and 5.0-preiced Davies. That means you’re likely in need of two budget-oriented players to fill out your defensive five. Now, many FPL managers (including me) never rest their Chelsea defenders regardless of the fixture, so why not try picking two budget men who can fill in for your ARS and TOT heavy-hitters for when they face top-four sides? Just use the rankings above to select the teams/players that are best suited to both this objective and your overall team budget. But there’s more…
Using the excellent series of FFS rotation articles already mentioned at the top of this article, you can then cross-reference your budget team/player selections to try and achieve not only the possibility of filling in for your ARS and TOT defenders during their most difficult fixtures, but you can also try to maximize the possibility that your two budget defenders will rotate well with each other as much as possible over the course of the season—or at least during major ‘chunks’ of it.
Case in point: according to the rankings, a NEW defender will provide you with excellent coverage for all 10 of TOT’s difficult GWs against Top 5 sides. Furthermore, a SUN defender will provide you with excellent coverage for all 8 of ARS’s difficult GWs against Top 4 sides. Plus, as most savvy FFS managers already know, NEW and SUN also rotate home and away perfectly with each other throughout the 38-Gameweek season. Not only that, but you might have also noticed that TOT provides excellent defensive coverage during 7 of the 8 GWs that both ARS and CHE players face challenging fixtures, meaning that a defensive 5 consisting of, say, Luis, Debuchy, Davis, NEW and SUN is likely to earn you some decent point production from your defence during those select few weeks when some of your heavy-hitting defenders — in this example, Luis and Debuchy — face more clinical/potent attacking sides.
CONCLUSION
This is just one example of how the above data can help you smartly — as opposed to randomly — select budget-oriented defenders to fill out your back-line, but I would also encourage you to cross-reference my team rankings with some of the short-term defensive rotations and views/strategies already put out there by other FFS community contributors and members (in particular, see Lanley Staurel’s The Alternative Short-Term Defensive Rotation View). Interestingly, this strategy of ‘filling-in’ for your defensive heavy-hitters dovetails well with the thoughts and sentiments put forth by Jonty in his insightful July 23 Hot Topic: Forget Differentials – Focus on the Top 4.
Author note: Should there be mostly positive response to the substance of this community article, I’d be happy to run the data for the two or three heavy-hitting defensive teams not included in this article — namely Man City, Liverpool and Everton — as a follow-up community article. The main reason I haven’t included these teams in my analysis is because, at least at the moment, I haven’t (yet) selected defenders from these heavy-hitting sides to start the 2014-15 season.
9 years, 9 months ago
Excellent stuff!!