Welcome back, reader.
Let’s start with a data dribble: through nine gameweeks, Premier League teams have accumulated around 260 xG, depending on your data source. The average is about 13 xG per team.
They scored 243 goals, so 12.2 per team.
Players’ finishing is a bit underwhelming right now.
Some could learn a thing or two from Jan Paul van Hecke (£5.0m), who scores headed goals while lying on the ground and still maintains healthy effective ownership in the game we play.
Makes you think.
Just when I thought this was the nicest thing I’d experienced all week, something big happened… and it happened because of you.
Yes, you!
Frankly, I’m proud of the community we’re building here. Data Dribble brings together everything I love in the most enjoyable way imaginable – content creation, data analytics, storytelling, personal branding, football, decision-making, Fantasy Premier League, online business, and giving value and helping others, to name some.
On top of that, it brings a unique dimension: connecting with like-minded people through our weekly Q&As and on Discord. Seeing this community come together makes it all the more rewarding.
After spending the best part of a year consistently ranking near the top of the Rising Bestsellers in Sports leaderboard (including a stint at #1), you’ve finally made it happen on Sunday:
Data Dribble has broken into the Top Bestsellers in Sports chart for the first time in its history:
The one where the big names are.
NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Social media phenoms Swiss Ramble, Josh Williams and EBL.
Respected journalists, including Pablo Torre, Paul Tomkins, Grace Robertson and Joe Pompliano.
… and somehow, my not-so-little newsletter appeared there too.
I can say two things with confidence – the Data Dribble content is unlike anything in the FPL space, and the same goes for the community.
Thank you for making this happen! Genuinely.
Alright.
We have an early Gameweek 10 deadline, so let’s get back to work.
Gameweek 9 review: Defence wins championships…
… and Gameweek 9.
Watching Riccardo Calafiori lose his debut DEFCON two-pointer wasn’t much fun, especially with Maxim De Cuyper lurking on the bench, but the number that matters here is the 6 points gained on the field.
A decent result in a gameweek I didn’t expect much movement:
After pondering several routes last week, I narrowed it down to three:
roll
João Pedro → Nicolas Jackson
Dominic Calvert-Lewin → Nicolas Jackson
Although I don’t usually hedge (to be consistent in decision-making and because of my kink for match-up analysis), I decided to play DCL against my Bournemouth defence and roll to 4 free transfers, accepting a lower ceiling.
Sure enough, Bournemouth allowed just 0.78 xG to Leeds and kept a clean sheet (DCL’s goal was rightly disallowed), so the decision cost me 7 points directly.
However, in this case, it’s important not to view it as an isolated event – the reason I decided to snub Jackson was that it would lead to even more benching decisions in the following weeks.
I’ll show you.
Here’s my bus team for this week:
Then we have Gameweek 11:
Followed by Gameweek 12:
Imagine there’s Jackson on top of that.
Generally, I’m still happy with the team. I’m exposed to the sides ranked near the top of the fixture difficulty rankings, and I hopped on many of them early.
On Solio, there’s a cool feature that shows which teams drive the biggest swings in your team’s performance. Below is my team in the following 8 GWs, with no transfers made, for simplicity.
It all looks pretty healthy to me, with no major risks against the field for those most important sides (once Pedro is back, I will tackle the Chelsea overkill):
Anyway, did you notice the yellow card attached to Pascal Groß’s (£6.2m) name?
It flags a player who is approaching a suspension.
And, in the coming weeks, my team will light up like a Christmas tree, just before the festive period. How fitting.
Once a player accumulates 5 yellow cards, he must serve a one-match ban. I own several players who are close:
Pascal Groß: 4 yellow cards 🟨
Morgan Rogers: 3
António Silva: 3
Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 3
Marcus Tavernier: 3
Maxim De Cuyper: 3
You need to be constantly aware of this so you don’t get yourself into trouble. And you need to treat your free transfers with the utmost respect in the coming weeks:
International break after Gameweek 10
Christmas congestion after that
Players nearing suspension
… injuries and red cards you can't control, which can happen anytime
If you’re not careful, it could get ugly real quick.
But not to be just negative.
Gameweek 10 looks fun on paper, and the period after it is one of the most exciting FPL can deliver. There’s a lot of action. You can shoot up your ranks. And we’ll get a massive amount of information to sharpen our decision-making.
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