The Player Raters Team of the (Half) Season

The end is nigh for player rater model, I'm hoping to replace it with a more refined model soon so there won't be any more updates to the current model. As a send off for the model, I thought I'd have a looked at what it thinks the best team so far would have been, it might serve as help for those on wildcards as well. Remember that the model only looks at points from goals and assist, it ignores clean sheets, appearance points, most bonus points and yellow/red cards. This is most noticeable with defenders, the choices are the most attacking defenders, not the ones I'd expect to get most points.

To select the team I modified the superb spreadsheet produced over at insideFPL, go check it out because it's a great tool to play around with. I pulled the ratings from the PR model and run the solver to find the best attacking 10. I decided to find two teams, the first was the perfect team found with an unlimited budget, the second a cheaper option which includes some differential options. Remember the players are selected for best attacking potential on a per appearance basis!

The Player Raters Perfect Team

Here's how the team breaks down:

Player	Current Price	Expected Points from Goals and Assists (Per Appearance)
Coleman	£6.7m	1.5
Debuchy	£5.2m	1.3
Kolarov	£5.3m	1.1
Walcott	£9.6m	3.1
Ozil	£10.0	3
Ramsey	£7.2m	3
Eriksen	£7.2m	3
Suarez	£13.3m	6.2
Aguero	£11.9m	4.3
Sturridge	£9.1m	3.1
Sum	£85.5m	29.6

Not a bad looking team, and all for a very modest £85.5m. It's not quite affordable, but downgrade one of the heavy hitters and your left with a realistic team. (Thanks to @SoccerSaber for pointing this out). This team has an expected points total of 29.6 each gameweek, so that's roughly 5 goals and 2 assists. Not bad from 10 players.

First thing to note is three Arsenal midfielders, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. What might is that Ramsey is one of them, his points are no fluke at all (unlike a certain Ivorian), they are fully backed up by his stats. The second thing to note is that Sturridge is the 3rd striker, with a return this past gameweek many will be debating whether to double up on Liverpool strikers. The stats certainly back that idea up, but Sturridge's injury record has always blighted his fantasy prospects. Third, the inclusion of Eriksen will almost certainly come as a surprise, unless of course you've been following this blog, since I tipped Eriksen to be a big name 2 months ago. His stats really put him among the elite midfielders and at £7.3m, he's about £2m under his real value, making him a tremendous pick up on your wildcard.

I also want to highlight the defence. The three chosen are the three with the best attacking potential (subject to budget) but all are viable picks. Coleman is obviously a great pick and leading all defenders for points, Debuchy's value is harmed by his propensity to a yellow card, while Kolarov could be a steal for the second half of the season. Incredibly attacking and now seemingly first choice LB for one of the best defences in the league, all for £5.4m.

The 'almost made it' list of players who just missed out on being included in this team:
Defence: Walker, Ivanovic
Midfield: Hazard, Silva, Coutinho
Forwards: Rooney, Lukaku

The Player Raters Budget Team

Here's how the team breaks down:

Player	Current Price	Expected Points from Goals and Assists (Per Appearance)
Bardsley	£4.5m	1.0
Shaw	£4.8m	0.9
Delaney	£4.4m	0.6
Shelvey	£5.4m	1.9
Redmond	£4.6m	1.7
Dyer	£5.2m	1.7
Puncheon	£4.9m	1.7
Rodriguez	£6.3m	1.9
Berbatov	£7.0m	2.4
Crouch	£5.5m	1.8
Sum	£52.6m	15.6

First, let me state that when I was running the solver to find a budget team, Suarez, Ramsey and Eriksen were included in almost every team. Not only are they big point getters, but they also offer tremendous value. I've manually excluded them from consideration for this team.

Now, I'm expecting to catch some flack here because it includes some odd names, and excludes some obvious ones like Januzaj, Barkley and Ravel Morrison. Neither of these are rated poorly by the model, but the players chosen just edged them for expected points. While these names are high profile, they're not much better than their unknown rivals. Barkley has grabbed roughly 3.5PPG so far, while Redmond has 3.1PPG, and the model has Barkley as over-performing his underlying stats.

Bardsley and Shaw are clearly worth considering, both are playing in good defences (though Southampton's is much better than Sunderland's) and offer some attacking potential for a kind price. I'd be less keen on Delaney when there are £4.0m alternatives in Palace's backline.

Upfront is where there could be some real value, especially in Berbatov who almost made it into the main team! As the front man for a much improved Fulham attack, Berbatov's fantasy pedigree can't be questioned but there's an element of risk in putting him in your team. More secure but much less glamorous is Crouch, who would be my ultra-budget forward of choice if you wanted funds to invest elsewhere in your team.

The 'almost made it' list of players who just missed out on being included in this team:
Defence: Celustuka, Rangel
Midfield: Mutch, Kasami, Amalfitano
Forwards: Hooper, Berahino, Deulofeu, Long

Wrap-Up

So there you have it, two teams that have been selected to gain most attacking points (goals and assists). They're by no means the 'perfect' teams, but my wildcard team will probably end up with 7 or 8 of the same names as the main team.

*Edit* The latest stats for GW21 haven't been included, so the inclusion of Eriksen and Sturridge comes before their big games the weekend just gone!