What Are The Characteristics Of The Top Players Picks in FPL
🗓️Created on 23/10/2024
👤Written by Bailey Corner
What is the Fantasy Premier league?
Image sourced from the Premier league website
Welcome to the Fantasy Premier League! The Fantasy Premier League (FPL) is one of the most popular fantasy sports games, with over 11 million players globally managing virtual teams based on real-life players in the English Premier League (EPL). Each FPL manager selects a squad of players from the EPL, and the performance of these players determines a score of points in the FPL game. To be successful during the year, your players are awarded points based on numerous metrics, including goals, assists, clean sheets and defensive actions. But… be careful because your players can also lose points by conceding goals, receiving a yellow or red card or simply not playing the game. The overall aim of the game is to accumulate as many points as possible over the course of the season, allowing you to outscore your friends in private leagues or any public leagues.
History and Evolution of FPL
Launched in 2002, the FPL was an interactive way for new and existing fans to extend their growing interest in the EPL. Although an instant hit, the FPL was quite a small game with a niche player base, with the majority of players coming from the United Kingdom itself, where the EPL takes place. As the EPL grew into one of the most popular soccer leagues in the world, it was only a short amount of time before the FPL saw major increases in player counts.
(Image Sourced from Sky Sports)
New fans turned into season veterans quickly due to the intensity and time required to build the best team you could. New players begged their friends to join their league, and from then on, soccer fans from all over the world flocked in to participate in the game. Now players could follow their favourite players from their favourite teams! However, managers soon found that strategy is critical to this game, and only sometimes are the best players in the league the greatest choice in a team. So now managers asked themselves… How do we know who to pick? This is a big question we will soon understand. Don’t worry we are currently top of the table in our private league so you’re in good hands! With so many metrics in the game, let us dive deep into how the point system works in the FPL.
How Does FPL’s Point System Work?
The FPL scoring system has undergone many changes within the past year; however, we will focus on the 2024/25 season to keep things up to date. Each FPL manager receives a transfer budget of 100 million pounds to select a squad consisting of 15 players from the EPL. This squad will consist of 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders and 3 forwards. Managers must start 11 players each game week with 4 players on the bench to make substitutions at the start of the game week in case of injuries or missed games. The performance of these 11 starting players will determine the total points at the end of the game week based on how they played in real life.
As seen in the above image, a table consists of how players can score points, with the majority of points accumulated through game weeks coming from goals, assists, clean sheets, tackles and playtime. However, players can incur negative points for poor performance, such as by conceding goals, receiving a yellow or red card and missing penalties. Additionally, FPL managers can choose a captain and vice-captain every week whose points are doubled, creating another factor in team selection. So, would you go high risk for high reward or play it safe with a consistent player? Let’s find out! FPL relies on intelligent strategy, with each manager able to make weekly transfers, switching out underperforming or injured players for new ones while staying within a budget.
Image sourced from ‘Off the Bench Podcast’ website
Now that we have explored all the basics about FPL, we need to understand how to pick the best team and continue to pick informed players through informed decisions. This leads to our key question: What Are The Characteristics Of The Top Players Picks in FPL? Managers have their favourite teams in real life; however, by examining correlating data between teams, influence, point scoring and other player statistics, we can better understand factors that drive success in the FPL.
Distribution of Position Among The Top 50 Players
This bar plot presents the distribution of player positions among the top 50 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) performers based on points per game. This data shows key roles including forwards (FWD), Midfielders (MID), Defenders (DEF), and Goalkeepers (GKP). This visualization lets us understand which positions contribute most significantly to high FPL performance while providing insights into how to structure an optimal fantasy team.
The box plot below shows the distribution of points per game among the top 50 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) players across forwards (FWD), Midfielders (MID), Defenders (DEF), and Goalkeepers (GKP). This visualization highlights the consistency and variability of performance for each position, offering further insights into which roles provide more reliable fantasy points.
These box and bar plots reveal that midfielders (MID) are the most represented among the top 50 FPL performers. This reveals some points:
This suggests that midfielders (MID) consistently generate more points due to their involvement in both offensive (goals and assists) and defensive actions. Forwards (FWD) also have a substantial representation that can be directly linked to their goal-scoring abilities, which harbour high fantasy points.
Defenders (DEF) and goalkeepers (GKP) are less represented indicating that their points potential is often dependent on team performance metrics like clean sheets rather than their individual actions. Goalkeepers show minimal representation, which may suggest that their contribution to FPL points is limited compared to that of outfield players.
Team Representation in the Top 50 Players
This bar plot reveals the team representation among the top 50 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) players focusing on points per game.
Teams like Manchester City and Liverpool are highly represented, indicating that they consistently produce high-performing players. The strong presence of these teams among the top 50 players may be attributed to their offensive strategies and higher-quality plays. Their dominance in the EPL highlights the team’s ability to support player success.
On the other hand, teams like Burnley or Sheffield United have limited representation among the top 50 players, suggesting their reliance is often on fewer standout performers. These teams may still have value picks, but fewer individuals perform at an elite level than teams like Manchester City and Liverpool.
The scatter plot below includes all FPL players and shows the relationship between average points per game and average player cost for each team.
Teams like Liverpool and Arsenal exhibit a positive relationship between average cost and points per game, showing that players from these teams tend to be higher-cost but often deliver strong performances. It is up to the manager to decide whether these high costs justify picking these players over budget-friendly players from lower-scoring teams. Teams like Brighton and Brentford stand out as value performers, appearing above the trend line, which indicates their players provide high value relative to their cost.
Conversely, teams like Spurs and Man City might appear below the trend line, suggesting that players from these high-profile teams only sometimes deliver points that justify their price. Managers should be cautious about investing heavily in such players, as they may provide inconsistent returns compared to their costs.
Are we Able to Identify the Most Consistent and Influential Players?
The scatter plot above illustrates the relationship between player influence and their average points per game. It reveals that players with higher influence scores tend to have higher points per game. Forwards (FWD) generally cluster in the higher influence however we do see outliers past the a mark of 300 influence however to not influence results we have chosen to keep these points here. We do see a positive trend here indicating that these players not only have a significant impact on the game but also tend to generate more FPL points. Defenders (DEF) and goalkeepers (GKP) appear to also conform to this trend. This suggests that influence is a strong predictor of FPL points, especially for more attacking roles.
This box plot shows the distribution of influence scores for each player’s position in the FPL. Midfielders (MID) and defenders (DEF) generally exhibit higher median influence scores compared to forwards (FWD) and goalkeepers (GKP). The larger influence values for midfielders and defenders suggest that these roles are more involved in critical events during a match. Forwards and goalkeepers tend to have lower influence scores, implying that their impact is less pronounced in terms of point contribution making them less influential on average compared to more attacking roles.
Image sourced from CNN.
Methodologies and Our Data Set
The players.csv data set was sourced from Kaggle.com and some of the things we did to enhance the readability of the data was:
The players.csv dataset we utilized was created from publicly available data about FPL players. The sources were primarily non-academic but provided detailed statistics.
When examining metrics like points per game or influence we recognized the importance of outliers—players with extreme values either due to limited game time or exceptional performances. These outliers were carefully considered as they could significantly impact the mean values of our analyses.
It’s important to note that the players.csv dataset represents a specific season and might not account for historical trends.
The continuous data was rounded to 1 decimal place.
Image sourced from Fox Sports
What Have We Found?
So, what can we conclude from our findings?
Midfielders (MID) and Forwards (FWD) are the most represented among the top 50 FPL players due to their consistent involvement in offensive and defensive actions making them high-value picks.
Teams like Manchester City and Liverpool are heavily represented among the top 50 players while teams like Burnley have fewer standout performers suggesting the importance of selecting players from consistently successful teams.
Arsenal and Liverpool players justify their high cost with strong points returns, while Brighton and Brentford offer budget-friendly but effective players, making them valuable additions to an FPL squad.
Players with higher influence generally earn more points per game, highlighting their importance as reliable picks for consistent points accumulation.
Thankyou for reading our report. We hope you understand a bit more about the game and our passion for making the right decisions. I told you were in good hands… See you on the field!.. Virtual field!
Image sourced from Sport Cal