GW 9 Transfers and Team Selection

Please welcome to the statistics on team selection and transfer activity for GW 9. See this post for highlights and graphs, FULL STATS are available in THIS GOOGLE SPREADSHEET.

TRANSFERS AND TEAM VALUE

• Contrary to some expectations, there was nothing special about transfer activity this week compared to the weeks before. 13.5% of FPL teams are starting this week on negative points having taken a point hit. The average size of a point hit taken is higher this time than in the last 3 weeks, but smaller than in any of the weeks before.
• Roughly 40% of all wildcards in FPL have already been played. Most wildcards are still available, but if season 13/14 was any indication, only 15% more wildcards are likely to be played until the end of the season. Almost one third of the teams up top have their wildcards still intact, which gives them a certain competitive advantage.
• Of all the wildcards that have been played by now, every fourth was played in GW 4. Among the teams that are in the current top 10K and have already played their wildcard, every second team played it in GW 4. This may indicate that GW 4 was a good time to play your wildcard.
• Team value is obviously rising slower this season than in the season before, top teams have only acquired ₤2.7m extra value than an average FPL team.

	Random Sample	Top 10K
Number of Managers	20,000	10,000
Average Transfers Made	0.76	1.20
Point Hits Taken	13.5%	18.0%
Average Points Deducted (Incl. No Hits)	0.94	0.86
Wildcards Played	2.2%	1.7%
Wildcard Status
– played	39.4%	62.5%
– available	60.6%	37.5%
– active	0.0%	0.0%
Average Team Value	₤99.4m	₤102.3m
Average Money in the Bank	₤1.1m	₤0.9m

TRANSFERS MADE

• Last season, 32% teams were dead after 8 gameweeks. This week 57.7% made no transfers while only 23.6% top teams stayed quiet. The difference of 34% may be a good evidence that this season we’ll see a similar dynamics of teams passing away as in season 13/14.

Number	Random Sample	Top 10K
0	57.7%	23.6%
1	17.9%	37.4%
2	15.3%	30.9%
3	4.3%	5.6%
4 and more	2.7%	0.9%
Wildcard	2.2%	1.7%

POINT HITS TAKEN

Point Hit	Random Sample	Top 10K
0 points	86.5%	82.0%
4 points	8.7%	15.2%
8 points	2.8%	2.4%
12 points	0.9%	0.3%
16 points and more	1.1%	0.1%

TRANSFERS IN

• After a 19 point haul, Aguero was unsurprisingly the main target on the transfer market.
• Among Everton defenders, top teams preferred to buy Baines while casuals were more attracted by Jagielka.

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Agüero	11.0%		1	Agüero	14.7%
2	Pellè	9.2%		2	Berahino	10.4%
3	Berahino	7.5%		3	Baines	9.4%
4	Tadic	5.2%		4	Tadic	8.7%
5	Jagielka	4.3%		5	Pellè	8.7%
325 different players bought				237 different players bought

TRANSFERS OUT

• All the doubts surrounding Diego Costa’s fitness and the attractiveness of Aguero have resulted in mass sales of the Spaniard and a ₤0.3m decrease in his price. Ulloa bandwagon has proved to be one the worst bandwagons of this season.
• Surpisingly, almost 5% of top teams sold Sterling this week.

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Diego Costa	11.0%		1	Diego Costa	20.8%
2	Ulloa	6.0%		2	Ulloa	7.3%
3	Azpilicueta	3.2%		3	Azpilicueta	6.3%
4	Falcao	2.8%		4	Di María	5.8%
5	Dzeko	2.5%		5	Sterling	4.8%
454 different players sold				345 different players sold

FORMATIONS

• 3-4-3 is still by far the most preferred formation in FPL. Dead teams prefer ‘4-4-2’ though.

Formation	Random Sample	Top 10K
‘3-4-3’	42.4%	78.7%
‘3-5-2’	16.9%	13.8%
‘4-3-3’	7.4%	3.0%
‘4-4-2’	30.1%	4.0%
‘4-5-1’	1.7%	0.4%
‘5-2-3’	0.2%	0.0%
‘5-3-2’	0.9%	0.1%
‘5-4-1’	0.4%	0.0%

CAPTAINCY

• Aguero is by far the most popular captain choice among top teams. Diego Costa is still the most popular choice in the whole game.

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Diego Costa	22.5%		1	Agüero	61.7%
2	Agüero	16.6%		2	Pellè	13.3%
3	Pellè	6.9%		3	Diego Costa	8.0%
4	Di María	5.6%		4	Sigurdsson	3.2%
5	Rooney	5.5%		5	Sterling	3.2%
227 different captain choices				43 different captain choices

STARTING GOALKEEPERS

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Howard	12.0%		1	Forster	15.2%
2	De Gea	11.1%		2	Krul	12.0%
3	Lloris	10.7%		3	Begovic	10.4%
4	Courtois	8.7%		4	Mannone	9.4%
5	Szczesny	6.8%		5	Foster	9.3%
48 different goalkeepers				29 different goalkeepers

STARTING DEFENDERS

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Clyne	26.7%		1	Clyne	46.9%
2	Ivanovic	26.7%		2	Baines	44.1%
3	Baines	20.7%		3	Bertrand	34.0%
4	Dier	17.9%		4	Wisdom	31.1%
5	Bertrand	17.0%		5	Taylor(SWA)	24.0%
200 different defenders				113 different defenders

STARTING MIDFIELDERS

• The template midfield cosnsisting of Fabregas, Sterling, di Maria, and Sigurdsson remains incredibly popular.

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Fábregas	52.5%		1	Sigurdsson	82.8%
2	Sterling	51.3%		2	Sterling	76.0%
3	Sigurdsson	46.4%		3	Di María	73.2%
4	Di María	38.7%		4	Fábregas	72.6%
5	Schneiderlin	16.0%		5	Tadic	32.2%
235 different midfielders				96 different midfielders

STARTING FORWARDS

• Aguero’s ownership among top teams has increased dramatically this week, from 23.7% to 73.4%, i.e. by almost 50%. As mentioned above, transfers in made up only 15%, the other 35% of the increase is down to old owners who were outside of top 10K last week. In total, 45.75% new teams entered top 10K after last GW.

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Diego Costa	50.0%		1	Agüero	73.4%
2	Pellè	25.6%		2	Diego Costa	66.5%
3	Agüero	24.4%		3	Pellè	61.1%
4	Naismith	21.3%		4	Welbeck	39.5%
5	Welbeck	17.2%		5	Berahino	13.7%
95 different forwards				44 different forwards

BENCHED PLAYERS

Random Sample				Top 10K
1	Myhill	14.8%		1	Duff	29.4%
2	Krul	12.1%		2	Hutton	18.4%
3	Bruce	10.3%		3	Krul	18.4%
4	Vlaar	9.0%		4	Moore	18.3%
5	Given	8.4%		5	Boyd	18.0%
604 different players on the bench				445 different players on the bench

OWNERSHIP AND CAPTAINCY DISTRIBUTION FOR MOST CAPTAINED PLAYERS

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About This Post

In this post, I take a look at 2 samples: randomly selected 20,000 FPL teams and the top 10,000 FPL teams as of the start of the gameweek.

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