Want a prediction algorithm to give you fantasy football tips? You've come to the right place.
What is The Algorithm?
The Algorithm is a statistical spreadsheet member's tool developed by our resident statistician Carl Weeks. It uses various spread betting odds and expected bonus to determine the expected points for each player. Carl has created this statistical beast so that it can be used in both FPL and Sky games.
What can it do?
The spreadsheet has a 'user dashboard' where you can toggle how many weeks into the future you want to see expected points and it will give you the top picks. It can predict:
- Who you should select as captain: By selecting the current week only, The Algorithm will give you its captaincy prediction.
- Display top picks of X amount of weeks. Choose the number of weeks and it will select the top players over that period.
- Filter by price, value and fixtures. Searching for a 6m midfielder that has the best upcoming fixtures and highest predicted points total? Or the best value forwards over the next four weeks? No problem, Carl's spreadsheet has you covered.
- Plan ahead. See the impact of your transfers on predicted points total for both FPL and Sky.
- Sky captaincy planning. See if you have captaincy days covered and when you'll need to draft players in. Automatically updates your budget and expected points totals. Handy.
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Bloody hell this is good Carl. Thanks for sharing mate
Really glad you like it. It will be updated before at various times before the season starts (for transfers and to include Telegraph). During the season I try and update on a weekly basis for player stats and spread firm expect match goals (replace my estimates).
In user dashboard, trying to exclude all teams except the 3 promoted teams but no-one then shows in the top 20 predicted players for each position.
There are two things you need to do here. Firstly, C16 needs to be set to No, then set the teams you want to Yes. You’ still won’t get any of the promoted clubs and just players with zero points. This is because no promoted teams have players meeting the minimum number of matches. If you set C11 to zero then it would make these players eligible.
The problem with new teams and players is that they have no past perform to base predictions. These are just based on averages for the position and hence will have mainly the same prediction. Of course as the season progresses we’ll start to get data on these players to base projections.
Thanks for this Carl – going to be very useful bit of kit for FPL and Sky over the season. Top work ?
Hi Andy, welcome to the site.
I’m going to leave @Carl to answer this one
lovely work mate. in regards to xG data, have you developed this as well?
This is absolutely brilliant stuff Carl. Very clever and useful!
No I didn’t develop the xG myself. Originally, I started using shots from https://www.whoscored.comthen I stumbled across https://understat.com/ which is brilliant. Has a break-down by match and player
cheers Carl, I’ve used understat as well
Cool! Very handy Carl! ?
Looks a terrific bit of kit there Carl ?Agree with Salah and Aguero being key up to the Overhaul, and with Valencia as the captain pick for weeks 1 & 4 (although neither fixture is that great!)First time I’ve logged onto Sky this summer. This is what I came up with in 15 minutes ? [attach]9[/attach]Fortunately there’s plenty of time to adapt things over the next few weeks…
Very nice team and done so quickly as well. You may wish to change your keeper as I doubt he’ll be number 1 this season. Palace have a friendly tomorrow and Ro hinted he’ll start with his strongest available starting 11 which may give some insight.
Let’s hope it’s Speroni then – the extra funds would allow a midfield upgrade along the lines of Stanislas to Sigurdsson/Walcott (Everton have an excellent ticker for the first four games) or Ralls to Antonio (West Ham have a pair of plum home fixtures.)
Let it defo won’t be Speroni. Bit surprised that Hennessey started the friendly match tonight, so may be first choice but I was under the impression it’d be Guaita. You’ll be pleased to hear PVA has scored two already tonight and it’s only half time
Hey guys, really like this tool. It’s definitely helped me identify my first draft. I set up a league for my pals last year and Dan joined it and won hahaha!! I need all the help i can get this year.How often will the tool be updated? I’ve tried to incorporate Allison but hes not in it yet.
Welcome to the site @James Hendrie!
I’ll leave @Dan Cox to apologise for stealing your league winnings haha!
@Carl usually updates weekly I believe. Although no previous history for Allison, so might not get a prediction for him pre-season
I’m really glad you like the prediction toolkit. I have updated tonight. I’m on holiday soon so won’t update until the final week before the season.Once the season starts I update on a weekly basis, first once I have corrected the data and then on the Thursday or Friday once I have the spread firms expected goals for the weekend.As Will mentioned, the prediction side of things is very difficult for players with no data. The player won’t appear in the top 20 tables or less you reduce the min matches to qualify to zero (though you then get loads of non playing players appearing). You can put them in the planning section.Good luck for the season ahead.
Has the sheet been updated? Thanks so much for making this amazing tool.
In terms of updating, I try and have this finished by Wednesday night each week. On the planning page I will be hiding columns of weeks that have past.
Am I nuts or is Aguero missing in the FPL planning section?
You are not going mad. There was a little bug, eg the name ranges being picked up didn’t include the first 5 players including Aguero. I have now corrected this.
Thanks
Huge appreciation here for this toolkit. Great work fella!
What is the difference between the top 20 and the bottom 20?
Sorry for the delay in replying, but just returned from holiday.The top 20 is the top 20 by predicted total points.The bottom 20 is a list of the top 20 by predicted total points per £mHope that helps.
Is there a way to save the document and this still to continue to update? As each time log in i have to alter my team etcI am probably just being amatuerish at this for the document purposes, but use it each weekThanks in advance
You can save a copy of the spreadsheet either into your own one-drive or to your PC. However, when I update the model your information would be in the updated model.For your team, highlight the rows that consist of the team (for “PlanSky” this would be rows 14:24) then copy and paste into a blank spreadsheet (some #N/A will appear but don’t worry about these). When the next spreadsheet is updated then highlight the rows where this was pasted into the blank spreadsheet and copy, goto the prediction model and in cell A14 paste. Hope that makes sense and helps, if not then please let me know.
Makes complete sense, just wanted to see if another way. Thanks for getting back to me
Hi Carl – I can’t open the spreadsheet – error message says that there is author encryption. Any advice? cheers
sorted! cheers
Sorry about that. There is a page I protect and protected the spreadsheet instead by mistake. Glad its working again
Hi Carl, thanks for such a valuable resource – just starting to get to grips with the toolkit in readiness for the first overhaul. Just wanted to let you know that something funky seems to be going on with the excel sheet in onedrive. When following the algorithm link above it appears to be editable by everyone and the various “PlanXXX” worksheets have gone etc. Should that be the case? I’ve retrieved a previous version from a few days ago which I’ve downloaded to work with as it has the right worksheets, but thought I should mention this here in case something needs changing.
Thanks, I’ve updated the prediction following the weekend games.I don’t protect the pages mainly due to time and I keep a master version. I over-write the public once a week (usually a Wednesday evening), but earlier this week due to the international break.If anything looks incorrect in the future then please let me know and I’ll update the file.Good luck with the over-haul.
Ah gotcha, makes sense! Thanks for explaining that, and also for the fresh update ready for the overhaul – just the job, look forward to spending time planning out my strategy over these next two weeks. And all the very best for your planning too, cheers!
Thanks, Carl. The link works but I can’t see how to get to the user dashboard tab at the bottom that I used to use….it seems to have disappeared? thanks
I can see it now – thanks
Glad to hear it is now working. All the best