As part of our 2019/20 partnership, the guys at Fantasy Football Fix have invited us, the content team at FantasyBet, to pen a weekly column on their blog. After a brief brain-storming session that involved a topless FPL calendar and a live recreation of the gameweek’s worst injuries, we’ve settled on a weekly article that we’re calling Unexpected Goals.

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Unexpected Goals is effectively the opposite of the ever-popular underlying stats analysis that has become so ubiquitous in the FPL-sphere. Rather than looking at the players and teams excelling in metrics like xG, xA and xGA, we intend to do exactly the opposite.

After each gameweek, we’ll be analysing the players and teams who overperformed their underlying stats by the biggest margins. That means looking at the painfully undeserved clean sheets, the aggravatingly improbable assists and, of course, the jammiest unexpected goals. 

Why? Well, firstly because it’s important to be able to spot a bandwagon when one comes chugging up the track. Underlying stats are a great way to determine if a player is the real deal or if they’ve simply lucked their way to a few FPL returns. Unexpected Goals will shine the magnifying glass on the latter category of players.

Secondly, it’s just darn interesting to know whether we’ve benefited - or, indeed, suffered - from our frequent flirtations with Lady Luck in any given gameweek. 

We’ll be farming the underlying stats using FFFix’s super-accurate underlying stats model, with the first article due very soon after Gameweek 1. If you want to know more about how Fix calculates xG, xA and xGA, read this article.

Until then, happy tinkering. May the expected stats be ever in your favour.

Don’t forget, a free 3-month Fix subscription is waiting for you. Just enter FantasyBet’s £50k season-long FPL game and use the code “FIX19” when you deposit.