FanDuel Fantasy: Strategy Lessons Learned from the Season so Far

The international break is upon us, giving the perfect respite to reflect upon the first seven gameweeks of the 2016-17 Premier League season.

While the drama has played out on the field, fantasy managers all over the country have been winning thousands of pounds in prize money playing FanDuel.

In fact, FanDuel has paid out over £150,000 to those who know how to pick a winning starting XI this season so far.

For the uninitiated, FanDuel is the next generation of fantasy football. It’s just like the regular fantasy game you know and love, except all the action takes place on a single matchday or round of fixtures.

There’s no season-long commitment and there’s no waiting nine months to celebrate victory over your mates and all the other armchair Pep Guardiolas across the land.

You can play as often or as little as you like and you can even play for free: There is a contest to suit everyone.

For Premier League Gameweek 8, there are dozens of ways to win cash—the “£6,000 Fan Favourite” contest, for example, will see over 330 fantasy managers win a share of £6,000 in prize money.

Novice players, meanwhile, might want to try a “Top Half Wins” contest, which does exactly what it says on the tin: Simply finish in the top half of your league and you get a payout. You quite literally just need to be better than average to win, so it’s a great starting point.

But to win in FanDuel—just like in standard fantasy football—you’ll need to pick the right team and take the right strategic approach. Based on the action we have seen thus far in the Premier League, here are a few useful tips to increase your chances of success…

Think about defenders who play in bad defences

Fantasy logic dictates that the best kind of defenders are full-backs who get up the field to participant in attacking movements, as they win points for defensive and attacking action.

To a certain extent, this rings true in FanDuel: in Gameweek 7, Manchester City’s Pablo Zabaleta earned 36 FanDuel points, which is considerably above average. In the same match, Tottenham’s Danny Rose picked up 24.25 points, with a shot on target (worth five points), five clearances (worth a point each) and a brace of successful tackles (worth a brace of points each).

However, it is possible to find exceptional value in defenders who play in the centre of the park—for less glamorous outfits. Last week’s best performer was Winston Reid with a tremendous 43.75 FanDuel points. The West Ham centre-back cost only £7.4 million, which is well below the average player cost (you have an average of £9.1 million to spend on each of your starting XI).

Want more proof that centre-backs are worth your time? The highest-scoring defender in the game right now is Hull City’s Curtis Davies, while Scott Dann and Laurent Koscielny are also among the top six defenders by average weekly score.

There are plenty of points available for defensive actions like tackles, interceptions, clearances and shots blocked (see a full breakdown of the scoring here). Crucially, defenders aren’t penalised for goals conceded. This means centre-backs who play in defences that are beleaguered for 90 minutes are more likely to rack up points.

So, more often than not, a relegation-threatened defender can offer much better value than his glamorous counterpart who keeps a clean sheet.

Think about a 3-5-2 formation

The most popular formation in regular fantasy football, according to the Telegraph, is a 3-4-3. This is the most attacking formation and one that is optimised to yield the most points from goalmouth action.

However, FanDuel uses Opta stats to measure every player’s true on-field contribution, which means there are many more opportunities to win points further down the field (as we learned in the previous tip). The points yield from the first seven gameweeks of the Premier League may suggest that a slightly different formation approach is warranted:

Defence	29.04
Midfield	29.28
Attack	26.1

Judging by the top 10 performers in each category, the midfield is the most lucrative part of the formation, followed by attack and then defence. Hence, it may be beneficial to play a 3-5-2 formation, thus adding the most possible midfielders to your lineup.

Anecdotally, this approach makes sense, as modern Premier League tactics allow midfielders to enjoy much more of the ball. There are also a lot more midfielders in the game than strikers, which potentially means a higher chance of a successful points yield.

Some regular fantasy players choose to put five in the back, banking on a litany of clean sheets. However, since only goalkeepers benefit from clean sheets in FanDuel, this approach would be less conventional.

That leads us nicely to our next lesson: Clean sheet potential isn’t necessarily the best approach for selecting your man between the sticks…

Pick a goalkeeper who sees lots of action

A goalkeeper will earn 10 FanDuel points for a clean sheet, which is a massive boon for any fantasy manager—the only action worth more on the field is a goal scored (15 points).

In regular fantasy, the shot-stopper of a title-challenging side who spends more time shouting than saving is desirable. However, the first seven gameweeks in FanDuel fantasy may suggest that a busier goalkeeper who is frequently tested is beneficial:

Name	Ave. Weekly Points	Price	Goals Conceded
Kaspar Schmeichel	17.75	£7.9m	11
Claudio Bravo	16.19	£7m	7
Hugo Lloris	14.95	£7.1m	3
Tom Heaton	14.61	£7.6m	9
Lukasz Fabianski	14.32	£7.9m	12

Kasper Schmeichel is the best-performing goalkeeper, despite conceding nearly 1.6 goals per game—that’s nearly four times as many as Hugo Lloris. However, the Foxes ‘keeper made five saves in his last game against Southampton for three FanDuel points each, earning a total of 25.5 points for Gameweek 7.

Stoke City’s poor goalkeeper Lee Grant, meanwhile, is the last line in one of the worst defences in Europe. However, he earned an impressive 24.75 FanDuel points at Old Trafford with eight saves, a clearance and numerous successful passes.

When Opta stats are the key metric, a busy goalkeeper is often better—and cheaper—than one who is left with little to do during games.

Find your “differential”

It goes without saying, but in order to win, you must think differently; it’s no good if you have the same team as everyone else.

This means you have to find the “differential” in your team—the player who isn’t highly owned but who will make a difference in a single round of games.

In order to see how crucial this idea is, take a look at this data from game week seven:

Player	Score	Player Cost	Points Earned Per Million In Value
Nacer Chadli	40.25	£5.3m	7.59
Winston Reid	43.75	£7.4m	5.91
Nordin Amrabat	33.5	£5.8m	5.76
Matt Phillips	30.25	£5.8m	5.76
Marcos Alonso	31.5	£5.4m	5.43

Fantasy football is all about maximising point yield per million spent. None of the top five performers from last week by points-to-value ratio were “big” names, and only one of them plays in a team in the top seven.

Nacer Chadli, the best-value player of the week, cost a mere £5.3 million. As a result of his exceptional point yield in the past three weeks, Chadli is now priced at £11.5 million for Gameweek 8, but if you struck while the iron was hot and made the West Bromwich Albion man your “differential,” you would have reaped the benefits.

The takeaway point is that there is value all across the game if you can spot it. Research head-to-head records, see which players traditionally do well against their opponent and keep an eye on the players in bottom-half teams who are on a hot streak—much like Chadli in recent gameweeks.

Remember, if you take a chance on a crop of players who do not perform above their price tag, you can start again with a clean slate in the following gameweek. Therein lies the beauty of FanDuel.

To find out more and to start playing, head to FanDuel.co.uk. Use the code “BLEACHER” when you sign up and you’ll get your first entry refunded up to £10 as entry credit if you don’t win.