Looking Beneath The Surface

Looking at the statistics there are some interesting things to note. Chelsea has kept seven clean sheets. The next best is Sunderland and Manchester United with three. You are better off selecting Chelsea and United players for their firepower but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some Sunderland defenders.

Tottenham has only had one clean sheet this year. You would have thought a side that is doing as well as them would be doing better with regards to this. The crazy thing is that Spurs have conceded just eight goals but there has been one in every game bar one.

Are you familiar with the name Chris Brunt? He plays for WBA and has six assists. This is second in the whole league behind Nani. Peter Crouch of Tottenham hasn’t been scoring that many but has five assists as does Matthew Etherington of Stoke.

You just don’t want to be picking all the big names. 20 clubs means lots of players to choose from.

You could get away with selecting your fantasy football side from just four teams but what would the fun of that be?

You can be seduced by the names such as Drogba, Lampard, Berbatov and Tevez. Sure you would be crazy not to select these players just because they play for the big teams but there are many quality players with the lesser teams who get overlooked.

For instance, how many fantasy football players would have Bolton’s Johan Elmander in their side? He has five goals for the season. That is the same as Solomon Kalou.

Power of One

Fantasy Football is a numbers game but you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt. Consistency is important when selecting someone for your fantasy football side. You want to be assured that they are going to be a regular contributor. Thus something like average points per game is an important indicator. Go there now and you will see the likes of Malouda, Berbatov, Drogba and Walcott in the top 10. Who is on top of the list? Alan Hutton. Who?

The Spurs player scored and had an assist in his first match of the season for them. If you want to be really picky, his average points per game should be 18 as he came on just before half-time. Nine points in 45 minutes is a fantastic result but the more he plays, the more likely that is going to settle down at a number around 3-4.

You need to look at the numbers and decipher them as opposed to simply thinking that Alan Hutton is the best player in the Premier League. What is sure is Chelsea’s class. They have six players in the top 10 in terms of average points per game and another three players in the next 10 meaning 9 of the top 20.

Are there any major surprises? Apart from Hutton not really. Take away him and the Top 10 consists only of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United players. What about after that? In 11th spot, you have Fulham’s Moussa Dembélé. His two goals and two assists see him averaging 4.8 points per game. Also from Fulham you have Carlos Salcido but his average of five points per game is just from one game.

Again it may still be early to look at the numbers with that much confidence because of the small sample size. Once everyone has played 10 games, that should be more of an indicator especially of players from the smaller teams who you wouldn’t have heard so much about. You need to remember that the past can only help you so much in terms of predicting the future. Still maybe for the moment stay away from Lee Cattermole. The Sunderland player has two red cards from three games!