Fantasy Premier League Team: Preseason
Come build your dream Premier League fantasy football/soccer team!
This workshop would require the students to work with large slabs of data [e.g. https://fbref.com/en/comps/9/keepersadv/Premier-League-Stats (Player)] to determine which players are the best performing, most cost-effective, and likely to generate good fantasy returns based on factors like strength of schedule. The goal would be for students to develop proficiency with Excel/Google Sheets as they can be used as excellent tools to clean up tables, filter stats, analyze data rapidly, build graphical representations of data (e.g. box+whisper to inform students of outliers vs average performers). We’ll work through statistics to determine who would be the ideal players to select. Students will consider how matchups/scheduling may affect a player's output.
- Example: If they are playing three very bad defenses as a clinical striker, they are a must-have (basic). If the 4 most attacking opposition players have a combined 2.3xg/90 and they are playing vs a keeper with a -7.7PSxG+/- and -0.44PSxG+/-/90, it is a bad idea to have a defender from the same team (advanced). However, it may be worth having the goalkeeper, as they gain points for saves made.
Economic concepts such as Nash Equilibrium would also be considered as tradeoffs are a major part of FPL. Finally, game management is very important. This has relation to Nash Equilibrium as students may think “I should wildcard (make an infinite amount of budget restricted transfers with no penalty)” at an inopportune time as they have not considered xy or z.
- Project management & execution
- Research skills
The students will create a vast spreadsheet of data that has allowed the student to create their ideal fantasy football team (15 players, £100million budget). Students can even enter a Curious Cardinals league and then compete against each other!