Rule Comparison FPL & Fanteam – Part 3: Midfielders

In Rule Comparisons between FPL & Fanteam – Part 3: Midfielders of @Ramorey_FPL’s “How do the different rules in Fanteam effect which players we should be choosing, when comparing to the regular FPL game?” series, it’s time to take a close look at the Midfielders.

FPL & Fanteam – Part 3: Midfielders

Fancy taking home part of the prestigious €1,000,000 prize? First you’ll need to wrap your head around the different rules that come with playing the FanTeam season game.

Missed the previous articles of the rule comparison FPL & Fanteam series?

• Rule Comparisons between FPL & Fanteam – Part 1: Goalkeepers
• Rule Comparisons between FPL & Fanteam – Part 2: Defenders
• Rule Comparison FPL & Fanteam – Part 4: Forwards
• The FPL to FanTeam journey

What are the main differences we should be looking at when analysing the differences in scoring for midfielders?

The key takeaways from this, which differentiate midfielder points in the FanTeam game from the Fantasy Premier League game, are as follows:

• Team “wins” in period player is on the pitch (+1)
• Team “loses” in period player is on the pitch (-1)
• Midfielder or Forward plays the full match (+1)
• Foul resulting in a SCORED freekick (-2)
• Foul resulting in a penalty (-2)
• No Bonus Points

These are mostly the same differences as we noted in the previous article for defenders, however, there is one difference – the 90-minute rule. 

Let’s have a look at how these differences affect the midfielders in the FanTeam game.

Team “wins/loses” in the period player is on the pitch (+1/-1)

This rule simplifies down to the following: Gain a point if you win the game, lose a point if you lose the game – nothing for a draw. 

In the previous article, we discussed this in more detail [https://fanteam.blog/2020/08/28/rule-comparisons-between-fpl-fanteam-part-2-defenders/], so I’ll just leave you with this table as a refresher.

Lack of Bonus Points

I analysed all the midfielders who collected bonus points in FPL last year. To make it a bit easier on the eyes, I’ve filtered it down to only the midfielders who gained at least 10 bonus. 

The key question we want to ask regarding this analysis: which of these players are playing for bottom-half teams? 

These are the players we want to remove from our team building thoughts, players like Grealish and Shelvey. Potential FPL gems like Cantwell, should they emerge next year from the promoted sides – I recommend you remove them from your thinking, they’re most likely very poor value in FanTeam without their bonus points.

Foul Resulting in a Scored Freekick (-2) / Foul Resulting in Penalty (-2)

Again, like the article on defenders, I won’t be delving too deep into this one as it requires a bit more of a deep dive and I don’t believe one season is a big enough sample size for it. But let’s have a look at how it affected the midfielders last season. 

Scoring freekicks conceded

Penalties conceded (Note the penalty doesn’t need to be scored)

Midfielder or Forward plays the full match (+1)

The key one, the one to take note and keep in your thinking. This unsuspectingly impactful rule can boost you up the leader board next year, should you apply it to the way you pick your side. This is the rule that separates defenders and midfielders when it comes to the differences in scoring.

This was the one I was most interested in when doing this analysis, because I truly believed it would uncover some hidden gems that I never would have considered in the FPL game.

I’ve compiled a list of some key players to demonstrate the key difference this can have in final points for midfielders.

Quite the list? I’ve summarised my thoughts here but make sure to give it a read as there’s some incredible gems to be found here. 

Defensive midfielders

• Rice. The fact that he plays the full 90 every match for the entire season is incredible for our teams. It’s almost the equivalent of Rice scoring an extra 8 goals a season in FPL!
• Other notable options: Moutinho, Propper, Hobjerg, Ndidi, Dendoncker.

Man City Assets

• Fernandinho and Rodrigo both pick up 21 points from playing the full 90.
• De Bruyne and Sterling with less difference than I anticipated! 20 and 19 respectively.
• Mahrez, Silva and Foden down the bottom. With only 29 full 90 minutes between them.

Liverpool Assets

• Not much in it. 
• Fabinho (21, although worth noting he only started 22 matches – nailed on for 90 when hes in the team). 
• Salah 20 full 90 minutes, Mane 19 full 90 minutes.
• Wijnaldum, started the most games of all Liverpool players with 34 starts, completed only 20 full matches.

Man United Assets

• Not many players here for 90 minute points.
• Fred with 21 out of 23 starts, but unlikely to start next season.
• James with 15 out of 24 starts, again unlikely to start next season.
• Matic and McTominay with 13 a piece out of 18/19 starts. If one nails the spot they could be good for bonus points.
• Martial with 14 out of 31 starts.
• Fernandes potential with 8 out of 14 starts – missing from data above.

FPL & Fanteam – Part 3: Midfielders: Final Analysis & Concluding Thoughts

To hopefully come to some kind of conclusion, I analysed various midfielders and compiled a table to try and demonstrate how drastically the points can change depending on which game we are looking at. 

Please note that the players listed here are just the midfielders I had on my mind at the time – there are lots more we should be considering. Please feel free to message me on twitter if there is any player in particular you’d like me to look at! It is also scaled to assume 2800 minutes, so anyone you expect to play more than this will be an even better asset.

Please note that Fernandes had a smaller sample size so this distorted his stats somewhat.

My thoughts on FPL & Fanteam Midfielders

• Defensive midfielders who play for top 6 sides become a lot more valuable when using the FanTeam scoring.
• Soucek and Rice are excellent value!
• Sterling, Mahrez and KDB all looking to push the 250-point mark should they be fit and playing the minutes (Maybe not great value but good captaincy shouts).
• Salah is the best pick in the game, providing decent value and an even higher points tally than in FPL.

That concludes my ramblings for this article on: “How points differ for midfielders between FPL and FanTeam”. In the next and final part of this 4-piece analysis, I’ll be looking at forwards. We’ll see how their points translate across the games and if there’s much value to be had for the guys leading the line in our teams!

Once again, thank you for reading, if you’d like to message me or get more insight please feel free to follow me https://twitter.com/Ramorey_FPL

And if you haven’t signed up yet, make sure you do! There’s a lot of money to be won this year and with the right insight you can be in with a good chance of taking some home yourself!

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