Best XI: Week 3

Welcome back to the BEST XI! It was another interesting weekend in the Premier League as we saw an insane 6-3 score between Chelsea and Everton and some upsets to go along with it. Manchester City were beat at home by Stoke and Manchester United couldn’t beat Burnley despite the addition of new signing Angel Di Maria. I’ll leave the big storylines for Neal’s Monday Morning Manager tomorrow and get right to some stats.

A note I want to make here is how I resolve ties. For example, only three defenders made it in this week’s Best XI but there was a five-way tie on top of the defender scoring list. When that happens, I choose the three cheapest players from the list.

With that in mind, I want to give an honorable mentions to Steven Naismith, Javi Manquillo, and Branislav Ivanovic, who had the points necessary to be in the best XI but a cheaper player with the same number of points sneaked in.

Best XI

Points

The top possible score this week in an allowable formation was 243 points.

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Cost

This week, the top score fit within our £ 100M budget once again, coming in at a cost of £ 82.77M*. The new price of our Best XI (if you were to try to create this team now after the price changes) is £ 106.33M. That’s a 28.5% increase in price.

One thing I’ve been keeping track of has been whether this percentage increase will show some sort of trend. I had hopes that prices will stabilize as we go into the season and players won’t have huge jumps in price after a single great performance and so far that has been the case. The % increase of the Best XI has gone from 42% to 29% to 28% in the first three weeks of the season.

*Keep in mind the cost does NOT include any substitutes.

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MVP

The highest score of the week was Diego Costa, who finished with an impressive 28 points after scoring twice against Everton. The striker has been on fire, scoring four goals in his first three Premier League matches and is a must own in fantasy. Even if you have to buy him now, his price is extremely affordable.

Best ROI

The best return on your investment this week were Matt Phillips from QPR and Rolando Aarons from Newcastle. Just like last week, these two were £ 1M fillers that performed well at nine points a piece. Ronaldo Aarons looked the more impressive of the two in real life and should have a regular spot in Newcastle’s defense, making him a decent bench filler for the coming weeks. Another great return was Martin Kelly, who also has an extremely low price and makes for a fantastic bench option.

Formation

The Best XI was in a 3-4-3 formation this week. The scoring was lopsided, as defenders lacked behind the other positions, as we’d usually expect in the Yahoo! game. The highest score for a defender was 17 points while midfielders and forwards from the best XI covered in the 20s. More on formation in the next section.

Formation Count

The 3-4-3 formation has now been featured in two of the three weeks this season and provides further evidence that this is the best formation available in fantasy soccer. Not only do forwards and midfielders score more, they’re also more predictable than defenders.

Repeat Offenders

We have one new addition to the list this week to add to Eric Dier and that’s Ryan Shawcross. The Stoke defender reached his points total with only defensive stats this week and shows us once again why he’s one of the top fantasy defenders in the game. Less than 4% of fantasy managers own him, making him a fantastic differential to own.

The fact that we only have two repeat offenders speaks volumes for how hard it is to predict fantasy performance. Well done to those of you who’ve had multiple Best XI winners in your squad.

Follow the RotoWorld_PL team on Twitter: Galin | Jeremy | Neal | Nik | Steve | Ben | Rob | Aaron

Team Rankings

Despite not adding anyone to the list, Tottenham are still on top of the rankings but they’re joined by Stoke City in a two way tie for first. Stoke are a surprising feature here as they’ve only scored two goals in their first three matches but have been boosted by Ryan Shawcross’ two Best XI performances and Mame Diouf’s solo winning goal against Manchester City.

How many players from the BEST XI did you have on your squad?