In this blog, Fantasy Premier League (FPL) Gameweek 8's numbers are analysed to determine the best players and teams to target going forward.

xFPL review

Salah tops the Custom Stats xFPL table for Gameweek 8 with a score of 13.0. The Egyptian international was top amongst all players for shots in the box (SiB) (five) and was afforded two ‘big chances’ (BC). Isak’s brace took him to six goals for the campaign, the Swedish international took three SiB, all of which were BC and notched an xFPL score of 9.7. McNeil was the weekend’s most creative player with six attempted assists, two of these were BC and he registered an xFPL score of 6.2. Trippier once against cemented his status as the must-own defender, the right-back attempted five assists and registered an xFPL score of 7.4. Haaland failed to register a single shot and managed an xFPL score of just 3.0 with two attempted assists.

What is xFPL?

xFPL is calculated primarily using expected goals (xG), assists (xA), which combine as Fantasy Premier League (FPL) involvements (xG + xA = xI), as well as expected clean sheets (xCS). These numbers are a result of underlying statistics (i.e. shot type and location will give a probability of scoring = xG). xFPL is the combination of these statistics and factors in appearance and bonus points to give an overall expected FPL point score.

Early Transfer Activity Analysed

Evaluate transfer analytics to see which players are popular with other managers.

As the above image from our Transfer Analytics feature shows, Watkins, Salah and Maddison top the transfers in so far with the trio all notching FPL returns in Gameweek 8. Cash failed to register any returns despite playing on the wing but he is still a popular option with Estupinan being sold by over 300,000 managers. Saka has been sold by nearly 100,000 managers after missing out against Man. City while managers have finally lost patience with Rashford after his consecutive blanks. Watkins Archer and Isak account for nine of the top 10 forward transfer combinations with Morris, Alvarez and even Haaland making way. In midfield, a large chunk of the transfers are going towards Salah with the 31-year-old featuring in four of the top 10 most popular midfielder transfer combinations. Estupinan naturally dominates the defender transfer combinations, with the trio of Cash, Burn and Trippier the most popular.

Alvarez vs Watkins

Alvarez is being sold by several FPL managers for Watkins ahead of Villa’s great run of fixtures and as the above images from our Fix Heatmaps feature show, Watkins has outscored Alvarez by 11 FPL points over the first eight Gameweeks. The underlying numbers are significantly superior for the Villa forward as well, he wins out on ‘Expected Goals’ (xG) (2.52 vs 4.19), shots (24 vs 26), SiB (13 vs 25) and while Alvarez has attempted more assists (19 vs 16), Watkins is ahead for ‘Expected Assists’ (xA) (1.57 vs 2.02) which indicates that he is creating better quality chances. Based on the above data, moving Alvarez to Watkins looks like a shrewd move.