BOTS VS EXPERTS: PREDICTING THE BEST TEAM FOR GW34

Good evening and welcome to the continuation of our series. Choosing a team for a game week can be hard. Sentiments and personal preferences can cloud ones judgement. There have been many FPL sites that try to predict the team for the week but there is usually a large discrepancy.

My plan in doing this article is to compare human analysis (totw from experts on different sites) to AI analysis (totw from bots on different sites).

Now these sites are expected to churn out different teams every week irrespective of transfer limitations. The difference is that the experts bring their teams based on strict FPL formation and price while the bots simply bring out the best set of players from their algorithm projections.

For this study, I'll be using 8* sites. 4 have bots (fantasy football fix, first, overlord and assist) while 4 are human experts (fantasy football scout, fpl academy, thefpl blog and the official fantasy app scout).

The team of the week is entered into my FPL team to make sure they are affordable and follow all FPL rules. The screenshot is shown below:

The picture below  
is an excel representation of the data gotten. I didn't delve into stats. Just collated results by sorting by next game week scores (for the bots) and getting the teams for the experts.

                            

 

There is room for 3 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 7 midfielders and 5 forwards in the initial selection for the bots and these are given rank 1-7 with 7 being the highest. The players with highest rank points are then fitted into an FPL formation that is affordable. Substitutes aren't used, a captain is also selected using the same method. 

Another modification made was to reduce the number of defensive entrants from a team to 2 as most bots select based on fixtures and can pick all defenders from a team.

The column in yellow are the top picks based on rankings by the 4 different bot sites (first 4 columns) with total rank points beside them in the bots column.. The next four columns give the experts view from four popular sites. The column in orange lists the players that were selected by at least 2 of the sites. There is no ranking for the expert teams. Finally, the column in red collates the data from all 8 sites and tries to give the best possible combination of teams from both the bots and the experts. The last column(blue) is for players who for cost or maximum number of team mates missed the cut but could be viable alternatives.

Our picks this weeks are dominated by dgw assets with 7 of the 11 picks. Starting with, HENNESSEY(4.3) who plays both spurs and liverpool. With 3 clean sheets in last 7 and with the allure of save points, he is top of the picking by both experts and bots with 5 picks across the board. Our defenders start with double man utd! VALENCIA(6.0) and BAILY(5.4) combine for another dgw fixture against burnley and man city. Bailys security of starts and valencias attacking returns convinceall the sites to go for at least 1 and 2 of the 4 bots went for both. GIBSON(5.0) has not missed a single minute of action this campaign and with valdes out, we look to him for security. Top for bonus among boro defenders, gibsons presence will be crucial for boro to try and do the double over bournemouth and sunderland.

In midfield, SANCHEZ(11.6) makes the team again after hitting a wonderful freekick past palace on Monday. A change of formation saw him play more centrally and he could thrive in the role.  ZAHA(6.0) features for the third time running as he has been instrumental to crystal palace turn in form. A game against spurs is not a joy to have but having scored 5 goals against chelsea and arsenal in their last 4 games, anything is possible. FIRMINO(8.6) ousts his brazilian teammate coutinho from the team to take his slot. Returns in the last 5 games puts him as an under the readar option and he could sneak in more with liverpool loanee sakho who has been one of the bedrocks of palace is out of the clash. HAZARD(10.4) is the surprise pick this week but with southampton rolling to the bridge at the back of a 3-0 loss to city, chelsea will be rearing to get back to winning ways against them and hazard will be at the lead of the match.

In attack, KANE(11.5) continues his unstoppable run in the team. A goal and assist in his first start since his injury proved his sharpness and he will be in no mood for jokes as he chases down lukaku for the golden boot and spurs chase down chelsea for the title. BENTEKE(7.2) who has upped his shot stats in recent weeks leads the line as the captain. With liverpool having problems in defense, tekkers arial threat should see him overpower defenders in his bid to show iverpool what they lost when they sold him. NEGREDO(6.2) is backed by a form that has seen him second for shots in the box over the last 4 weeks and a dgw against bournemouth and sunderland. 2 teams that allow many big chances in their backline. Negredo scored 15 points in the fiest legs of this fixture. 

Feedback is needed on the article so I know if its fun or usefull at all.

Hope you enjoy this piece.