BOTS VS EXPERTS: SELECTING THE BEST TEAM FOR THE GAME WEEK 33

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.

In goal, GRANT(4.4) home game against Hull stands out. With a superb defensive record at bet365 sttadium, its no surprise that he gets pick from 4 sites. DAVIES(4.8) continues his run in our team with a home fixture against bournemouth after notching a cleansheet last time out. SAKHO(4.8) stands out over Hennessey due to his knack for picking bonus points and is joined by cheap as chips everton defender HOLGATE(4.0) as we expect burnley to blank again.  

In midfield, SANCHEZ(11.6) makes the team after been left out last week due to his high price. A blank against palace sent the alarm bells ringing but for a player that hasn’t gone 4 games without a return, we expect him to stem the tide. Regulars ALLI(9.2) expectedly tops the midfield picking and is joined by budget on form palace midfielder ZAHA(5.9) who has 2 goals and 3 assists in last 6 games and faces a leicester side expected to be depleted due to their champions league exertions. COUTINHO(8.4) takes the final midfield spot after we maxed out on spurs slot leading to eriksen(8.8) and son(7.1) failing to make the cut.  

In attack, KANE(11.3) returns with a bang. Top for form before his injury and with golden boot on the chase, he tops our forward and captain picks for the week. mr explosive aguero(12.7) misses the cut due to budget restraaints and is replaced by BENTEKE(7.2) who has upped his shot and shot in the box stats in recent weeks. LUKAKAU(10.4) continues where he left off last week. The only forward selected by all sites and second in the captain picks, a home fixture against burnley brings a certain degree of assurance for his owners as he has scored in every home fixture this year.  

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

Hope you enjoy this piece.