Fantasy Football - 9: Three at the Back vs. Value for Money

( Code hosted on the Github repo)

There has been a lot of talk about defenders being better value for money than midfielders and forwards. I'd written a post about the optimal team configuration a long time ago and since it was only one season of data, I thought I'd just check it again.

Assumptions 1:

• I removed Chelsea and Leicester from 15/16 because of how unlikely both their performances were. Sure, there are swings in the table but those two teams in that season was a little too much. I feel the results are more representative without them.
• Points per match is probably a better metric than total points but the historic data doesn't have a mention of matches started so we'll have to make do with total points. To minimise the effect, I have taken players that played at least 1710 minutes (19 matches of 90 minutes) and hope that the patterns observed also extend to all the players put together.
• The data exposed is only for players active in the current season. This means that players who played in earlier seasons but have since left the EPL are not considered in the analysis for their
• respective seasons.
• Players get their positions changed over seasons. This is too small in number to worry about.

Value for money by position