CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

Captain picks are arguably the most crucial part of FPL and they provide us with the biggest and most tormenting gamble each and every gameweek.

You can get lucky and pick Sanchez in GW14 where he scored 23 points (46 points to you lucky FFUKers that captained him) or get unlucky and pick Aguero in GW8 where he didn’t start, came on for the last 35 mins, missed a penalty and scored -1 (-2 points to those people that captained him as I did). I drank a lot that day.

This article aims to provide you with a little insight into the stats so far this year and talk through a few different strategies.

I tracked back through my captain picks and it makes for depressing reading. Out of 18 GWs, I have correctly chosen the right captain just 5 times! 5! I’m probably being a touch harsh on myself as 6 times I was pretty close and only lost out on a few points. On 7 occasions though I lost out on approx. 10 points each time. I blame Aguero. I’m still haunted by his 5 goal-25 points appearance last season where I didn’t have him as captain (I don’t think I even had him in my team which is worse) and so now refuse to not have him in my team and not captain him.

My captain picks have given me an extra 122 points so far this season (thanks lads) however if I had chosen the correct captain every single week, I would have got an additional 90 points on top of this. This would put me SECOND in the league, climbing 19 places. To put this in perspective and again highlight the importance, Stuart Newton’s (1^st) captains have given him an extra 161 points, that’s 40 points more than me which is an average gameweek. Fair play to Stuart, he has chosen correctly 6 times which isn’t great but he keeps going for the next best thing only missing out on 3 occasions of circa 10 point hauls. What’s your secret?!

Paul Baker (83^rd) did an excellent piece on Captain Picks last season where he came to the conclusion that you want to pick a midfielder playing at home playing a bottom club. Well I thought it was a good time in the season to revisit this and see if it holds true this year. (Also worth mentioning Paul won the league last year so probably best to ignore this article and just do what Paul said last year).

Looking back at the first GW18s there are some similar patterns.

	Top player	Points
GW1	Coutinho	15
GW2	Stuani	13
GW3	Sanchez	16
GW4	Son	19
GW5	Chadli	21
GW6	Lallana	15
GW7	Koscielny	15
GW8	Stanislas	21
GW9	Shaqiri	15
GW10	Gundogan	18
GW11	Hazard	19
GW12	Ake	15
GW13	Llorente	15
GW14	Sanchez	23
GW15	Vardy	17
GW16	Lallana	19
GW17	Van Aanholt	15
GW18	Alli	15

Few things to note:

Surprisingly no Ibrahimovic and no Aguero (yes him again, more to come on him later).
Only two players feature twice, Lallana (what a season he’s having and he’s a bargain) and Sanchez.
Liverpool and Arsenal both have players that feature 3 times.

Let’s start by looking at two key bits of Paul’s analysis, home or away and position.

Out of the 18 GWs, the top player has been playing away 10 times so bit of a difference there to last year. However out of the 18, 12 have been midfielders with only 3 forwards and 3 defenders. Even if we take Sanchez out of the occasion as he is classed as a midfielder, it’s still been a midfielder over half of the occasions. Also if we remove the defenders (because what crazy person captains a defender?!), midfielders then make up 15 out of 18 players (why do I keep choosing Aguero?!).

I would also echo’s Pauls comments on playing a bottom club, 13 of the 18 have been where the player is playing a bottom 10 club. Hull have been on the receiving end 3 times!

STRATEGY 1 – Choose a midfielder with a home fixture.

However this is all brilliant if you have balls made of steel/you are completely mental and would actually captain Stanislas or Shaqiri but who really does this?!

So let’s take a closer look at some of the regular captains to see if there are any patterns within this elite group. No, De Roon is not one of them Pete.

	Sanchez	Costa	Hazard	Ibra	Lukaku	Coutinho	Aguero
GW1	2	5	10	9	0	15	9
GW2	3	5	4	13	1	2	13
GW3	16	5	11	2	2	2	2
GW4	1	12	1	5	17	1	0
GW5	10	6	2	5	12	7	0
GW6	14	1	2	2	2	14	13
GW7	3	12	3	1	8	2	2
GW8	5	9	8	1	8	3	-1
GW9	3	2	8	2	5	10	1
GW10	13	7	14	2	12	8	16
GW11	2	9	19	12	2	11	6
GW12	1	9	4	0	2	2	2
GW13	14	5	2	9	1	1	12
GW14	23	12	9	7	1	0	-1
GW15	5	8	3	2	12	0	0
GW16	7	2	0	11	2	0	0
GW17	5	6	3	12	2	0	0
GW18	3	0	10	15	8	0	0
# 1	4	3	1	4	3	3	2
Average points	7.1	6.6	6.3	6.3	5.6	5.8	6.2
Total points	130	115	113	110	97	78	74

Things to note:

Sanchez and Ibra have been top scorers 4 times
Despite being the 3^rd highest scorer, Hazard has only been top scorer once.
If you take out the weeks Aguero scored -1 for random factors, his average is 7.1. (Can’t wait for him to come back)
Coutinho top scorer 3 times despite missing the last 5 weeks

I think a lot of this comes down to what do you want from a captain? What would you be happy with?

Several theories here:

Just doing something, anything (bit desperate if you ask me)
Goal
Scoring above 10 points
Being the highest point scorer in your team

Let’s take Hazard, only top scorer once but if you had captained him every week you would have got an extra 113 points. Would you really be disappointed with this? I’ve gambled every week and only got an extra 9 points for all that stress and effort.

However Hazard has been quite hit and miss and it’s human nature that if a player isn’t scoring then you’re going to be less likely to captain him next week, other players have been much more consistent though.

So who has been the most consistent?

Table below shows by player how many occasions they have returned a certain amount of points.

	Sanchez	Costa	Hazard	Ibra	Lukaku	Coutinho	Aguero
Score <5	8	4	10	8	10	12	12
Score 5-9	4	11	3	5	4	2	2
Score 10-14	4	3	4	4	3	3	3
Score 15-19	1	0	1	1	1	1	1
Score >=20	1	0	0	0	0	0	0

Costa has scored 5 or more points and huge 14 times, impressive Mr Consistent. Imagine that, you’re captain scoring points almost every week, sounds like heaven. However Costa has only achieved 10 or more 3 times and is yet to break 15 points so if you had captained him every week you would be pretty happy every week but only have an extra 115 points, doesn’t sound that good after all?

STRATEGY 2 – Captain one player all season and never change it. Let’s hope you pick the right player.

A lot of this comes down to the fun of the game though, it’s boring to pick the same person every week and we all want to achieve the maximum possible. So my final strategy to look at is rolling the dice with your top players, probably the most commonly chosen strategy and see if there are any patterns there.

	Top Scorer	Top points	Home or Away	Opposition ranking
GW1	Coutinho	15	Away	4
GW2	Ibra/Aguero	13	Home/away	10
GW3	Sanchez	16	Away	10
GW4	Lukaku	17	Away	18
GW5	Lukaku	12	Home	15
GW6	Sanchez/Coutinho	14	Home/Home	10
GW7	Costa	12	Away	20
GW8	Costa	9	Home	16
GW9	Coutinho	10	Home	9
GW10	Aguero	16	Away	9
GW11	Hazard	19	Home	7
GW12	Costa	9	Away	15
GW13	Sanchez	14	Home	12
GW14	Sanchez	23	Away	11
GW15	Lukaku	12	Away	10
GW16	Ibra	11	Away	17
GW17	Ibra	12	Away	9
GW18	Ibra	15	Home	18

So what does this tell us? Home and Away fixtures doesn’t impact much. Opposition ranking shows us that if they’re playing a team in the bottom half of the table they’re more likely to do something. Shocker. However it is interesting that Opposition in the top 6 of the league only features once, Coutinho vs Arsenal in first game of the season. That’s it. It’s also interesting to see Lukaku, Costa, Sanchez and Ibra all having back to back top points scorers. Maybe it’s all about form and confidence.

Let’s look back at the top scorers table with any points of 6 or more marked with an x.

	Sanchez	Costa	Hazard	Ibra	Lukaku	Coutinho	Aguero
GW1			X			X	X
GW2				X			X
GW3	X		X
GW4		X			X
GW5	X	X			X	X
GW6	X					X	X
GW7		X			X
GW8		X	X		X
GW9			X			X
GW10	X	X	X		X	X	X
GW11		X	X	X		X	X
GW12		X
GW13	X			X			X
GW14	X	X	X	X
GW15		X			X
GW16	X			X
GW17				X
GW18				X	X

Definitely more clumps than individual weeks. Broken down by player now:

	Sanchez	Costa	Hazard	Ibra	Lukaku	Coutinho	Aguero
Total Weeks Scored	7	9	7	7	7	6	6
Isolated Weeks	3	0	3	2	3	1	2

So this says that Sanchez has scored in 7 game weeks and 3 of them have been isolated gameweeks. As you can see, more often than not players score points in clumps but what’s also interesting is that it’s rare to score points 3 weeks on the trot even for Mr Consistent, Costa.

STRATEGY 3 Captain one of the big guns who is on form and against a weak opposition but don’t captain them against a club in top 6 and not 3 weeks on the trot.

IN SUMMARY

If you’ve made it this far congratulations, your reward is the summary, don’t you wish you had just skipped down to this in the first place.

3 KEY STRATEGIES TO PLAY:

Midfielder against weak opposition
Play it safe, captain Costa (this isn’t just because I’m a Chelsea fan). Mr Consistent.
Roll the dice on the top performers that are in form and against weak opposition (Captain obvious I know)

Personally I like Strategy 3 and will stick with it, not the most reliable but I’m a gambling man! Anyway this is irrelevant because Aguero is back next week so that’s my captain choice done for the season apart from the odd week where I brave ignoring him which will inevitably be the wrong decision.