No matter how many points you score, regardless of how successful your transfers were, it’s almost impossible to feel good about a gameweek if your captain fails to deliver...

Hi there! I’m James. This is my first fantasy football article and I’m going to attempt to use a scientific approach on this delicate matter: analysing stats, from throughout the season so far, to try and find an underlying pattern behind the best fantasy point hauls we’ve witnessed to date.

Here on Fantasy Football Fix, stats and algorithms are common place. My pocket-calculator sums below don’t even come close in complexity, but still, they try to help answer many-a-fantasy-manager's ultimate question.

What's the most important factor when choosing the best captain?

The Home Advantage

I started my research by trawling through each gameweek's dream team and noting which midfielder or striker scored highest.

Sometimes, a defender had scored best, but how often do you captain defenders? I don't think I have at all this season. On occasions, the likes of Baines (what a has-been) or Ivanovic are tempting, but 99% of the time we armband an attacking player. So I ruled defenders out.

This probably doesn't come as much of a surprise, but I feel it really hits home (no pun intended) the importance of considering the chances of Mr X who's playing at home, compared to those of Mr Y who's playing away.

The Big Hitters

The next step seemed to be focusing on those who have been capable of delivering us all big points (fairly) consistently up until now.

Forget your Dusan Tadic's and Jon Walters', these six guys below have been at the forefront of many fantasy teams, especially when it comes to captain choices:

This fascinated me. Aside from Sanchez and Austin (who is, ironically, in a Bottom 8 side himself) these key players appear to be almost unaffected by the potential difficulty of a big match.

Hazard and Kane in particular have had no trouble in racking up serious points against tough opposition. Trust me, as an Arsenal fan, I know that!

So here, although only a small-scale study, it starts to make me think that a player's fixture is not so important. If you back a big-name player, whether it's against Hull or Man United, there is definite potential for good returns.

However, as the stats above show, it's still better to be playing against an 'easier' team. So I wouldn't advise giving the armband to whoever plays Chelsea every weekend! Still though, if you think they'll perform, then go for it. Don't let a theoretically 'tricky' fixture put you off. Easier said than done…

The Form

Form is the other key factor. Arguably the most important one too: the majority of mangers offer the armband to players who have excelled in recent weeks.

I've decided to use Fantasy Football 247's weekly Captaincy Polls to gauge which players were in form in each given week. It often receives over 1000 votes and helps reflect who was in red-hot form prior to each captaincy selection. Here are some of the most notable points that I found:

- On 6 occasions, the most popular choice was the highest scoring player of the gameweek. That's an 18% perfection rate.

- Just under half of the number one choices blanked during that gameweek.

- The mean average score of the most popular choice was 6.0 points. The average of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd most popular choices was 5.7 points.

- In comparison, captaining Hazard every time would've earned you an average of 6.6 points per gameweek. The current World #1 Simon March has managed to average roughly 6.8 points per gameweek...

- The man himself, Joey Barton, acquired almost 10% of the vote in gameweek 13 for unknown reasons. Some insiders blame @chinsandbellies.

There's plenty to digest here. The voice of FPL manager’s fairs quite well, but form can't quite compete with the Mr Consistent that is Hazard this season, who despite this has never scored more than 14 points in a given gameweek. Quite remarkable really.

One Final Thought

This coming weekend is no normal weekend. This weekend marks the start of the biggest DGW of the season. This adds a completely new factor into the complex equation that is choosing an FPL captain: certain players having 2 games. It's an obvious advantage. It also somewhat limits the variety of captains that will be considered this gameweek.

Who dares to not captain Mr Consistent? Okay, fine, who dares to not captain a Chelsea or Liverpool player? Only the brave amongst us for sure.

Aguero you say? Perhaps. Consider this though: his goal against West Ham was his first from open play at the Etihad for over 5 months. Crazy I know.

He's also against the Gilet Warrior's in-form army... watch him bag a hatty now!

Anyways, thanks for reading, it's been a pleasure and hopefully you can use something from this piece in the final gameweeks ahead.

I hope you have a great weekend.