The first week of Fantasy Premier League can be the most difficult, as there are limited stats to build a

new team out of. New managers utilizing new playing styles with new faces. One can only infer so much
from friendly fixtures (see: Everton 22-0). To make things more difficult, this is a World Cup year, so we
expect to see many key players involved in Russia this summer to gradually be integrated back into the
starting lineup over the next month.

Like many others, I’ve trusted in accepted wisdom with regards to expectations in the first few weeks.
New signings will struggle at first, ksdjfslf and Harry Kane will not score until gameweek 5. The purpose
of this piece is to analyze what to expect for the number of goals scored in the first 4 weeks of the
season. 4 weeks is an ideal timeframe as many teams are built with the intention of an early wildcard.
Data on current and past seasons has been collected from football-data.co.uk.

It’s often been said before that the first week of the Premier League brings the goals with it. Memorable
season openers in recent memory include Arsenal losing to Liverpool 4-3, then beating Leicester by the
same score a year later. Is this a trend that extends to other teams in the opening month of the Premier
League as well?

2017-2018:

The figure above shows the average goal output per team for each gameweek last season.

There may be some merit to claims that goals are plentiful in the opening gameweek of the season.
With that being said, it is difficult to discern a trend from last year’s data.
2015-2018:

This figure shows the same data as Figure 1, averaged over the past 3 seasons. Two things are
immediately noticeable:

 GW1: More backing for expectations of high goal output in week 1

 GW 2&3: Markedly reduced goal output compared to gameweek 1. This could be because teams
will have settled in and shaken off the rust after their first competitive fixture of the season
 GW38: The final gameweek of the season has the highest number of goals. This will come as no
surprise to anyone who has seen the madness of final day action, where European spots and
relegation are on the line.

Once again however, there doesn’t appear to be a clear trend in the number of goals scored as the
season progresses in between the first and final weeks.
The trend above is a trendline on the data from Figure 2 for average goals scored per gameweek during t
he past 3 seasons. This trendline has an r2 value of 0.128. R-squared is a measure of how close the data a
re to the fitted regression line: a value of zero indicates that the model explains none of the variability of
the data from the mean, and a value of one indicates that the line explains all of the variability of the dat
a. This data’s value of 0.128 indicates that although goal output tends to increase throughout the seaso
n, the relationship between gameweek and goals scored is very loosely connected.
In order to compare the first 4 gameweek to the remainder of the year, the data in the figure above
groups goals scored over 4-week periods. The bar above “0” gameweeks shows the average goals each
team scored between gameweeks 1 through 4 (1.2). The exception to this is gameweeks 37 and 38
which have been grouped together in the last column.

This view of goal output has homogenized the data even further. Goal output appears to be steady over
each 4-week group for the past 3 seasons, with the exception of the final two weeks of the season.

The figures above account for goals scored. This is pertinent for analyzing goal output from your FPL play
ers, but not so much goals conceded. In FPL we are pursuing the 4 points that come with a clean sheet.
A team that concedes 1 goal instead of 2 is still not meeting expectations when chasing clean sheets. Th
e figure below shows the average number of clean sheets per week for the past 3 seasons.

Legend: Red – Christmas fixtures, Green – Return from international friendlies

There is more to digest from the clean sheet data. We can see immediately that our initial finding that
goal output is higher on the first and last weeks of the season correspond to lower clean sheet count.
This is relevant, as it shows that the increase in goals scored during those weeks aren’t only coming from
fixtures with wild scores (Tottenham : Leicester 5-4, 2018). Rather there is an impact seen on clean
sheets recorded from teams across the board.

It appears that weeks 2 through 12 provide the highest number of clean sheets during the season, on
average, over an extended period. Clean sheet count has picked up in shorter patches later on in the
season, but in shorter bursts.
Another interesting trend to note is that clean sheets in the past have increased up until the Christmas
fixture season, where they begin to decline gradually.

Gameweek 26 is particularly interesting, as the past 3 seasons have had just over 2 clean sheets on
average during that gameweek. There doesn’t appear to be a clear reason as to why this takes place;
last year this was the fixture before a two-week break in which FA Cup fixtures took place.

Conclusion:

I am taking away a few things from this analysis:

 If you can not decide between starting a forward or a defender it could be helpful to target goals
and assist over clean sheets for gameweek 1
 Don’t be discouraged if your defenders don’t keep the as many clean sheets as you would have
expected in the first gameweek; expect improvement in the weeks to come, especially
gameweeks 2 and 3
 Taking a broader look at the season, the early weeks after gameweek 1 tend to provide plenty of
clean sheets so don’t be afraid to spend heavy in defense to start

For me, this will look like heavy investment at the back to begin with. At the moment, my backline
consists of Mendy, two players at at 5.5M, one at 5.0 and another at 4.5. Peter Blake wrote a great piece
on why defenders in the upper-premium range provide the most value for their price.

The data isn’t completely conclusive and could be interpreted differently. Have a look and share your
thoughts with me on Twitter @yusuf_ahmed13. Good luck!

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The final piece of the analysis will look at which teams conceded the least amount of goals through the
first 4 gameweeks of the season over the last 4 years.

Least Goals
Conceded
2015-2016 2016-2017 2017-2018
Weeks 1-4 Full Season Weeks 1-4 Full Season Weeks 1-4 Full Season
1 Man City Man Utd Tottenham Tottenham Man Utd Man City
2 Man Utd Tottenham Everton Man Utd Man City Man Utd
3 Arsenal Leicester Man Utd Chelsea Huddersfield Tottenham
4 Liverpool Arsenal Hull / Man City Tottenham / Liverpool /
West Brom Watford/ Chelsea
Newcastle
The fi

Next vis:

 Clean sheet count (clustered)

 Clean sheets for Top defending teams
o Either top defending teams for the season or top defending teams for each 4-week bin