Source 1, Source 2, Source 3 & Photoshop

When I signed up for Hive, I'd planned to write regular articles related to FPL and some thoughts on player selection. Unfortunately, time hasn't been my friend and coupled with the terrible start I've had to the season, motivation has also been lacking.

Despite this, I've been quite active in the Hive FPL Discord Channel and a recent interaction with @pappyelblanco gave me the nudge that I needed to get started.

The discussion evolved around the player selection process (hopefully he kept faith with Saka or went with his preference of Perisic) and he was interested in some thoughts going into the Quarter-Finals, so here they are.

(It's also a trial run for some of my new graphics so hopefully they work well!)

The Fixtures

So it feels like an obvious place to start - which teams have the best fixtures? To remove any bias, I'll look at the bookies odds (from Bet365) and for the Quarter-Finals, we have:

Team 1	Odds	Odds	Team 2
Croatia	9.00	1.36	Brazil
Netherlands	3.60	2.20	Argentina
Morocco	5.50	1.70	Portugal
England	3.00	2.40	France

So as far as this round of fixtures goes (it's also worth considering potential Semi-Final match-ups although we get quite a lot of transfers), Brazil and Portugal appear to be good teams to prioritise.

Attacking / Defending Potential

The next thing I'd consider is how attacking or defensive a team is - there's little point targeting a team's forwards if their entire game is about defending. This isn't simply how many goals a team has scored or conceded, but the underlying data on how many they're expected to score or concede (this topic is far more complex than this line does justice too but I fear a bore-fest if I expand upon this topic here!)

So for simplicity, I'll look at their (non-penalty) expected goals for and against using data from FBref.com:

Attack	Defence

Reverting back to the fixtures again, Croatia v. Brazil has one of the tournament's strongest attacks vs. the weakest defence so Brazil's forwards would be a good route to take (which is also reflected in the bookie's odds). Croatia's attacking stats are "middling" which suggests that they are capable of scoring although Brazil have one of the strongest defences to counteract this.

Morocco v. Portugal also has the bookies predicting a fairly comfortable Portugal win but the stats suggest it will be much closer. Whilst Morocco have the weakest attack left in the tournament, it appears that their defence is superior. Despite Portugal's demolition of Switzerland in the Round Of 16, the data suggests that they won't do the same again. If I were to target any Portugal players, my focus would be more on the defensive players (although if an attacking player stood out, I'd take the risk).

Netherlands v. Argentina has one of the tournament's worst attacks v. the best defence. Some additional context might be needed here as the Netherlands have missed their star man Memphis Depay but still, Louis van Gaal isn't exactly being praised for his attacking football. This could be another fixture where an Argentine defender is the route to take. Similar to the above with Portugal, if any players stand out (e.g. Messi), they could be worth selecting.

The final fixture and the one I'm most looking forward to is France v. England. Two of the tournament's best attacks against good defences makes this a game that many are finding difficult to predict (the bookies also have it as the tightest of the Quarter-Finals). Whether I'd go there or not from a defensive point of view, I don't know. On paper, other defences look like better options (although an attacking defender like Theo Hernandez could tempt me).

It's worth noting at this point that the opponents that these teams have faced might skew some stats. France hammered Australia in their 1st group game but on the flip side, Argentina struggled against the same team. So I'd be inclined to say that "ease of fixtures" might have balanced themselves out.

Captains

To start my player selections, I want to decide who my 2 captain options are. These tend to be the game's most expensive players so it's good to choose these first as they're the ones you probably don't want to compromise on.

I'd also advise that you select attacking players as there's a higher ceiling for points.

Captain 1

Given my expectation of Brazil's superiority, I'll start here and we have a few options.

Richarlison, Raphina and Neymar stand out as they're most likely to start - Bruno Guimaraes could be an option to include once team news has been announced.

Richarlison is Brazil's top points scorer so far but a quick look at their qualifying campaign, it's clear that Neymar is their talisman with 8 goals and 8 assists in 10 starts. I also suffer from price bias with my captains and Neymar's $10.5m price tag versus Richarlison's $7.5m feels more... appropriate. Brazil's fixture is first though so "risking" Richarlison might pay off, knowing that you've got a 2nd chance later. Decisions, decisions...

Captain 2

No other teams really stood out for the 2nd captaincy option so this one's slightly harder to justify but given France topping the charts for attacking and (in my opinion) currently having the best player in the world in Kylian Mbappe, the game's most expensive player is who my backup captain will probably be (although as an Englishman, this doesn't sit well). He also tops the charts individually for attacking threat so I have no doubt he'll prove to be a popular option.

Player Shortlist

So now that we've got our captains and an idea of which positions from which teams we're interested in, let's start thinking about the rest of the squad and create ourselves a player shortlist. I use a spreadsheet for this which also includes the players that I already own - this is how my spreadsheet looks after the round of 16 before I've updated it for the Quarter-Finals (I don't want to make things too easy for you!)

A few of these players are likely to change now that I have an additional round of data to review but I'm conscious that this post is dragging on a bit so I'll bring it to an end now.

What do you think?

There is a continuous debate between the Stats vs. Eye Test camps and I sit towards the Stats side (although I watch so much football that my biases also sneak in). Whilst this post give an idea into some of my approach, other details (e.g. how likely a team or player is likely to achieve their expected values) have been omitted for now.

Please share your thoughts with me and join the Hive FPL Discord Channel where I'm currently spending too much of my life.

All original images were found using Google Image's "Creative Commons Licenses".