Fanteam 1M PL Season game – GW17 Statistical Analysis

Our weekly Season game – GW17 Statistical Analysis articles are back with updated stats. In this article, we will present the key facts and statistics of the Fanteam 1M PL Season game from the midweek games.

Gameweek 17: Team scores

This week we got back to normal from a scoring point of view. We again had one match postponed plus some big players absent due to the pandemic, but at least this time it didn’t affect the most popular names and teams in the game.

The distribution was pretty wide compared to other weeks, as we saw more surprise results and some players with low ownerships achieving high scores at their games. 

Here are some key numbers about the graph above:

• Best team of Gameweek 14: 107.5 points
• Average Score of Gameweek 14: 56.3 points
• Top 10% threshold for Gameweek 14: 73 points
• Top 25% threshold for Gameweek 14: 65.5 points

Gameweek 17: Top players

Let’s see below how some key players performed this week. The X-axis on the chart visualizes the player’s price, while the Y-axis the points scored on Gameweek 14. The size of the bubble shows how popular each player is. The top-left quadrant is where the best picks of the week lie (cheap and high-scoring), while on the bottom-right we find the underachievers (expensive and low-scoring).

In this week’s chart, we can observe players getting “grouped” together in similarly-performing groups. Salah & Mane had a very bad day compared to their high-priced competitors who all were relatively close to each other (except Son & De Bruyne).

On the lower-priced player, Tierney was the outlier with 16 points, but there’s another high-scoring group of Soucek & Lloris. The rest of the popular players in these price ranges were all pretty similar.

Top fantasy scorers for Gameweek 17

1. Kieran Tierney (4.7M – DEF): 16 Fantasy Points – 2.833 teams (11.29%)
2. Toby Alderweireld (5.0M – DEF): 13 Fantasy Points – 663 teams (2.64%)
3. Heung-Min Son (10.5M – MID): 13 Fantasy Points – 9.926 teams (39.54%)
4. Kevin De Bruyne (12.0M – MID): 12 Fantasy Points – 8.908 teams (35.49%)
5. Alexandre Lacazette (7.1M – FWD): 10 Fantasy Points – 647 teams (2.58%)

Gameweek 17: How teams lined up

One important aspect of the 1M PL Season game – GW17 Statistical Analysis are of course the top captains of the game week.

Top captains for Gameweek 17

Kane, Salah, Fernandes and Son once again dominated the captaincy chart, combining to almost 80% of the teams. Kane was the top choice, but all four of them were very close.

Top transfers before Gameweek 17

In a season-long game like this, one of the biggest factors of each team is the transfers they make and which players are bought or sold over the season.

Below we have listed the 5 most popular purchases and sells for the week:

Most Purchased Players before Gameweek 17

1. Kieran Tierney (4.7M – DEF): 738 teams (2.94%)
2. Hector Bellerin (4.7M – DEF): 692 teams (2.76%)
3. Bruno Fernandes (11.4M – MID): 597 teams (2.38%)
4. Wilfried Zaha (7.1M – MID):  580 teams (2.31%)
5. Harry Maguire (5.5M – DEF): 563 teams (2.24%)

Most Sold Players before Gameweek 17

1. Timo Werner (9.7M – FWD): 907 teams (3.61%)
2. Jannik Vestergaard (4.60M – DEF): 903 teams (3.6%)
3. Joel Matip (5.1M – DEF): 741 teams (2.95%)
4. Kurt Zouma (5.1M – DEF): 586 teams (2.33%)
5. Charlie Taylor (4.5M – DEF): 519 teams (2.07%)

Transfers overview for Gameweek 17

Another important part of the game’s strategy is how managers spend their transfers. Choosing to pay a -4p penalty to change a player is a risky move, but is often important to tackle the matchups or save up enough funds for a key transfer.

The pattern of many teams not making any transfers is still here. Only 4/10 teams made any changes this Gameweek, indicating that many managers might have been still in a holiday mood, forgetting to update their teams.

We saw only 12.5% do more than one transfer. Almost all of them went with 2, indicating that it was probably managers who saved up a transfer last week.

Gameweek 17: Wildcards used

Wildcards are used to “reset” your team, allowing unlimited transfers to be made for a single Gameweek. Each team has two wildcards available, one in the first half of the season, and one for the second half.

The pattern with very few wildcards being played is continuing for the sixth week in a row. 32% of the managers are still holding their wildcard, either because they forgot to play it, or most probably for strategic reasons. Gameweeks 18 and 19 is the perfect opportunity to use a wildcard, with the blank and double GW sequence coming up to change the fantasy landscape in spectacular fashion.

Wrapping up: Standings after Gameweek 17

Below you will see a distribution of the team standings so far. For charting purposes, we’ve hidden the very low scores (below 610p) that represent ~0.5% of the sample.

We continue to experience the same trend of more teams falling behind slowly. A very small percentage of teams have taken a considerable lead, though.

In the next two Gameweeks, we expect to see a very big change here. As we saw, 33% of the teams are still holding their wildcards, and with a blank and double GW, things can change a lot! 

• 496 teams (~1.8%) are above 1100 points 
• Only 2 teams are now above 1200 points in total
• 17,100 teams are between 880-1060 points (~68%)
• Around 17% of the teams are now below 860 points in total
• The average total score across the competition now stands at 941 points

I hope you enjoyed the 1M PL Season game – GW17 Statistical Analysis! If you enjoy statistics and want to find even more insights, read Fanteam 1M PL Season game – Weekly Statistical analysis – The road so far (GW8)