I saw an R bloggers post a while ago that looked at players stats in FIFA to determine what position they should be playing given the player stats and positions of everyone else. I thought I would do that with last years FPL data from TOGGA.

I amassed all the data from 763 players and removed players that did not play at least 10 games. I then calculated the average player statistics per game. To refresh your memory, the player statistics were;

 [1] "G_Goals"                 "A_Assists"               "CC_Key.Passes"           "SCR_Successful.Crosses" 
 [5] "SOT_Shots.on.Target"     "STO_Successful.Dribbles" "AER_Aerials.Won"         "CLR_Effective.Clearance"
 [9] "CS_Clean.Sheets"         "INT_Interceptions"       "PS_Penalty.Saves"        "SV_Saves"               
[13] "TW_Tackles.Won"          "DIS_Dispossed"           "GC_Goals.Conceded"       "OG_Own.Goals"           
[17] "YC_Yellow.Cards"         "RC_Red.Cards"

Obviously points within these categories are more likely to be obtained by certain field positions than others e.g. “CS_Clean.Sheets” is a defensive statistic that forwards get no points for. We can use them together to determine what categories are reflective of what positions, but more interestingly, whether certain players cross the position boundaries e.g. an attacking defender. You could probably observe such patterns just by watching games, highlights, etc, but lets look at the data.

Given I had the years total stats e.g. goals for the season, I calculated the average per game. I then scaled each category to have unit variance, and conducted a principal component analysis. The analysis showed clear clustering of player by position given their statistics - not unexpected.

I was interested to see what drove the extremities of the data cloud. I found this to be simply the highest average score.

So what should we look for?

Defensive defenders

I tried first looking at the ‘defensive defenders’. They should be in the bottom right quadrant of the figure above. I looked at those players within this quadrant with avg scores > 6. I found them to be more transient players that did not play much the whole year (I also know because D. Blind was in my team).

Names Team AVG_Fantasy.Points.Average GP_Games.Played
V. van Dijk SOU 11.1 21
N. Otamendi MCI 10.9 30
S. Mustafi ARS 10.7 26
D. Blind MUN 10.5 23
C. Azpilicueta CHE 10.2 38
J. Vertonghen TOT 9.7 33
A. Kolarov MCI 9.5 29
L. Koscielny ARS 9.4 33
E. Bailly MUN 9.2 25
V. Kompany MCI 9.2 11


The same data, but with players who played more than 30 games. These should be in your back line.

Names Team AVG_Fantasy.Points.Average GP_Games.Played
C. Azpilicueta CHE 10.2 38
J. Vertonghen TOT 9.7 33
L. Koscielny ARS 9.4 33
G. Cahill CHE 9.0 37
G. McAuley WBA 8.8 36
M. Keane EVE 8.8 35
C. Fuchs LEI 8.7 36
D. Luiz CHE 8.7 33
C. Dawson WBA 8.3 37
B. Mee BRN 8.1 34

Attacking defenders

Now if we look at those players that pushed forward a bit more, and played more than 30 games

Names Team AVG_Fantasy.Points.Average GP_Games.Played
M. Alonso CHE 13.2 31
J. Milner LIV 11.5 36
K. Walker MCI 10.8 33
L. Baines EVE 10.0 32
C. Soares SOU 9.0 30
V. Moses CHE 8.6 34
C. Daniels BOU 7.7 34
P. van Aanholt CRY 7.7 32
J. Holebas WAT 7.5 33
N. Clyne LIV 7.2 37


Midfielders

The midfielder were all over the shop - but that is their job. To make thing short, lets just look at the midfielders and forwards in the middle of the plot with good scores.

Names Team AVG_Fantasy.Points.Average GP_Games.Played
P. Pogba MUN 14.2 30
C. Benteke CRY 11.9 36
M. Lanzini WHU 11.2 35
R. Mahrez LEI 10.3 36
A. Lallana LIV 10.1 31
J. Vardy LEI 9.9 35
F. Llorente SWA 9.8 33
R. Snodgrass WHU 9.6 35
N. Redmond SOU 9.1 37
E. Capoue WAT 9.0 37
T. Deeney WAT 8.9 37
G. Wijnaldum LIV 8.9 36
M. Albrighton LEI 8.9 33
K. Mirallas EVE 8.6 35
C. Brunt WBA 8.3 31

Attackers

I’m curious who are all the attackers - both forward and midfield.

Names Team AVG_Fantasy.Points.Average GP_Games.Played
H. Kane TOT 18.6 30
E. Hazard CHE 17.4 36
C. Eriksen TOT 17.2 36
A. Sánchez ARS 17.1 38
K. De Bruyne MCI 15.5 36
P. Coutinho LIV 15.1 31
R. Lukaku MUN 14.9 37
R. Firmino LIV 14.9 35
P. Pogba MUN 14.2 30
G. Sigurdsson SWA 13.8 38
S. Agüero MCI 13.8 31
M. Özil ARS 13.7 33
D. Alli TOT 13.3 37
D. Costa CHE 11.9 35
W. Zaha CRY 11.9 35


Fantasy tree

Lastly, I wanted to make a tree based on the statistics and positions. Players closer together score similar among the various statistics. It is quite homogeneous, but it would appear, for example, that E. Hazard scored/played similar to forwards such as R. Lukaku, H. Kane and the rest.

I hope these make sense!