The Scott Arfield Conundrum and other #FFScotland phenomena
The Rangers midfielder is enjoying an excellent season, so why is he owned by only 2% of managers?
November has been a fragmented month from a Fantasy Football Scotland point of view. Indeed, there have only been two gameweeks this month due to the disrupted nature of the league schedule.
First, we had The GW of Doom (GW13), with the Scottish League Cup semi finals leaving only three league fixtures that weekend. Then we had another international break. Now, the league is taking another weekend off due to the Scottish League Cup (no, now they’re playing another season in that competition. Yes, they have still to play the final of last season’s competition). FFS planning has been difficult.
However, December is upon us. There are no fewer than six gameweeks between now and Hogmanay. The fixtures will come thick and fast. This feels like a good time to run through some more trends and patterns we have noticed in the game this season.
The Scott Arfield Conundrum
Rangers are enjoying an exceptional season. A number of players are shining for the Ibrox side and Scott Arfield is one of them, with the 32-year-old notching four goals and five assists in 15 league appearances. Dig a little deeper into those numbers and they are even more impressive - he’s played 90 minutes only six times and didn’t play 60 minutes in a game until GW8.
Arfield has scored a goal and an assist in each of his last two league outings, notching a clean sheet point in five of his last six games. Only Lewis Ferguson (75) and Ryan Kent (75) have scored more FFS points than Arfield (60) this season.
Yet the midfielder is owned by just 2.0% of FFS managers. That is a remarkably low percentage for an asset with such regular returns. Arfield has kept the points ticking over for a number of weeks now, but has barely seen his ownership percentage rise in that time.
It’s possible this is down to FFS managers being restricted to three players from the one club. After 15 GWs, the top three points scorers in the game are Rangers defenders - James Tavernier (165), Connor Goldson (106), Borna Barisic (82). Many managers are tripling up and by doing so fill their Rangers quota.
If managers leave one Rangers spot to a non-defender, Kent is a more popular pick with ownership of 35.4%. Ianis Hagi is more popular, owned by 16.6%, but his percentage is falling steadily every gameweek - he was owned by 32.7% of managers in GW1. In fact, Arfield is the 14th most-owned Rangers player. Even considering the quotas at play, it’s surely time he started to rise up the list.
Working out a Vice Captain strategy
As you’ll no doubt be aware, Vice Captains work slightly differently in FFS than they do in other fantasy football games you might be familiar with. Goalkeepers and defenders made VC receive double points for clean sheets they keep while midfielders and forwards made VC receive double points for any goals they score.
This adds another layer of strategy to your decision making and going on the way the percentages are spread across a whole host of players, it doesn’t seem there is a consensus on how best to use your VC.
Kent is the most popular VC pick at this moment in time, with 9.1% of managers making the Rangers winger their second in command. Behind him, Kevin Nisbet has 7.4% of VC picks and behind him it’s Barisic on 6.5% and Ferguson on 5.6%. Going all the way down the list, the differences are incremental - there are 22 different players with at least 1.0% of VC picks.
Stevie May rising!
As we have documented in past posts, goalscoring forwards have been scarce so far this season. The big names, such as Odsonne Edouard and Alfredo Morelos, haven’t really found form over the early part of the campaign, but there is one forward starting to find the back of the net more regularly.
Stevie May was the joint top points scorer in GW15 alongside Tavernier with the St Johnstone man now the fourth top scoring forward in the game on 44 points. May has three goals and two assist in his last five league appearances, hitting a rich vein of form.
Only 2.8% of FFS managers have May in their team and so it’s possible the 28-year-old could be a handy differential heading into a busy winter period. St Johnstone have a tough December ahead of them, with fixtures against Aberdeen, Celtic and Rangers all coming up, but they also have games against Hamilton, Livingston and St Mirren in this period.
The set piece takers flying under the radar
A shrewd fantasy football manager should always look at who takes the set pieces for each team. There can be some good differentials to be found here, with some unexpected names taking corner kicks, freekicks and penalties.
Mark O’Hara is one such name. The 24-year-old is a frequent penalty taker for Motherwell, finding the back of the net three times in 13 league appearances for the Steelmen this season. O’Hara is Motherwell’s top-scoring midfielder with 40 points so far. He is only owned by 5% of FFS managers.
Nicky Clark has emerged as one of the success stories of this season, with the Dundee United forward finding the back of the net no fewer than seven times. This makes Clark the second top scoring forward in the game this season, outshining a certain other United striker with 26.3% ownership. Clark has taken penalties this season and looks a good bet from set pieces.
No player has taken more corner kicks than Alan Forrest this season (61), but the winger has been in and out of the Livingston first team. Forrest is still Livi’s second most owned player (23.5%) and this could be due to how he keeps points ticking over with the odd assist here and there.
Scott McMann might be the epitome of an ‘under the radar’ pick. The Hamilton man has taken 15 corner kicks this season and contributed three assists, making the joint-fourth top assists maker in the league this season. McMann is owned by just 0.6% of FFS managers.
App update…
This month will see a new update made to the app. This will include a Statistics section which will allow users to track points, ownership, goals, assists and several more numerical categories. This will help you when making decisions over transfers, captain picks and the rest.
Users will also be able to track scores from fixtures within the app. These will be updated live as they happen and will include events - goals, assists, yellow cards, substitutions etc. Users will also be able to look back through past GWs and forward to future GWs.
A number of other improvements have been made in this update of the app. Users will now be able to view a player’s future fixtures through their player profiles. Points deductions and Wildcards are now noted in the Transfer History page. A Dream Team will be presented, showing the top scoring players as points come in during a GW. You will be able to look through past GWs for statistical context. This is on top of a number of improvements in terms of the stability of the app.
Another thing you will notice is the placement of some ads within the app. We have tried not to spam you with them and have gone to a great deal of effort to make them easy to dismiss - there’s nothing worse than a glitchy ad that is difficult to close. These ads will help with the running costs of the game. We hope they aren’t too obtrusive.
Season 2 and beyond…
We are already making considerations for next season and beyond. Our aim was always to create a strong basis for our game in our first season and then use that to build more features and elements upon. We believe we have that strong basis and so development and tests for Season 2 are under way.
One such consideration concerns the scoring system for goalkeepers. We are aware it is the most static position in the game in terms of available points. Therefore, we plan on adding points for a certain number of saves made by a goalkeeper in a game.
We are also considering doing similar with tackles for defenders and passes for midfielders. The latter in particular could potentially reward those players who don’t do much in terms of goals and assists, but play a key role in the performance of their team.
Other small changes (like rollover free transfers) will be made for Season 2. It must be stressed that nothing is finalised at this stage, but we are always looking for ways to tweak and improve our game.
Team FFS