The 2022-23 season
The data I used:
http://fantasyscout.altervista.org/rankingsarchive.htm Previous season:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.sport.soccer/c/I3Yg3jyFLRU/m/3cdxYIYrAQAJ
Cycle 1: Last season, Daniele gained some real hope of keeping his place
on the podium, because he outscored both Michael H. and Jesus. This
season, fortunately, Neymar scored more points than Thomas Mueller (and
the latter's points weigh less because of the incredible number of duds
in Daniele's squad anyway); the result is that Jesus leapfrogged
Daniele, who is now out of the podium. The big questions are: Will
Neymar retire from the NT? Will Flick be so stupid to call up Mueller
again? If these two keep scoring, will they be able to catch up MH's
presumably stationary score? ...Or maybe Gabbiadini will be subbed on 16
times and dark horse Vasilij will get on the podium instead of two of
the three duelists (double the number of the substitutions, and even Sid Debgupta should be afraid!).
Cycle 2: Last season, Depay scored so many points that Tom could have a
long shot at the podium. This season, Depay got back to non-superhuman
level, and Tom got back to virtually no hope of reaching top 3.
Therefore, the algorithm has the podium as almost locked, and the story
of this cycle has ended---no, stop the presses! 4th-placed Daniele
scored twice as many points as 2nd-placed Andrea and 3rd-placed Binder!
And (OK, the algorithm does not know this) Andrea's main scorer Varane
retired from the NT! It's almost impossible that Andrea=Goetze will
score more points than Binder=Gundogan, so Binder can't get worse than
3rd. On the other hand, Daniele=Casemiro+Walker can _easily_ close the
33 point gap between him and Andrea. All in all, the story of the cycle
from now on is Daniele vs. Andrea. ...Where have I heard this before?
Cycle 3: The focus was on Nigel vs. Michael H.'s race for 3rd place, and
the guys delivered, scoring more than anyone but impossible-to-match
leader Andrea---notably, scoring more than twice as points as mediocre runner-up Daniele. Anyway, both Nigel and Michael H. scored 30ish points
thanks to three players aged 27/28/29 (OK, 28/28/29 in Michael's case).
To me, this sounds like the race is _on_. However, to (my attempt to
replicate) the prediction algorithm, this sounds like moving from
58%-44% to 80%-24% (chances of podium, Nigel first). Hmm. It looks like
the algorithm has been positively impressed by Nigel's Ake's step up and
by Michael's Digne and Laporte's step down. I don't know, but I would
bet on Michael at the algorithm's odds. The players to focus on should
be: Ake, Coman and Stones (Nigel); Shaw, Goretzka and Laporte (Michael).
Cycle 4: Another race for the 3rd place: Abubakr vs. Alberto. And,
again, they did their best to entertain us. Alberto was the best scorer
in the cycle, thanks to the usual Kimmich and the finally delivering
Dembele and Asensio. Abubakr was the third best scorer, thanks to "1 cap
and 1 goal a match" Mbappe. Indeed, Alberto and Abubakr were so good
that now Andrea's place on the podium begins to wobble...
Cycle 5: One year ago, I wrote that 2021-22 _may_ have been the season
Jackson won the cycle. This season, Jackson:
- got the 2nd best performance across all cycles;
- got to 1st place;
- moved from 77% to 93% chances of winning the cycle.
With Michael H. (35 points) and Alberto (26 points) unable to keep
Jackson's pace, it looks like the 5th cycle is _really_ over. Barring surprises, next year we'll have to focus on the race for the podium,
here too. Let's celebrate Jackson's four horsemen, all level at 11
points scored this season: Theo Hernandez, Maguire, Lautaro Martinez,
Vinicius Junior.
Cycle 6: Hey, it looks Jackson won two cycles in a year! But let's start
from the beginning. This season, ten scouts scored between 34 and 22
points. This is evidently what one should expect from a cycle 6 scout.
Well... Jackson scored 77 points. Or, in other words, Jackson would be a
normal scout if he only picked on one day. On January 30, 2020, Jackson
picked Grealish and Bellingham, who scored 10 points each this season. Unfortunately for everyone else, he didn't took 730 days off, and he
also picked Lucas Paqueta, Diogo Dalot, Diogo Costa, Camavinga, Pedri...
Cycle 7: Actually, Jackson did his best to win _three_ cycles in a year!
He scored a noteworthy 60 points, with the 3rd best performance of the
season after... Jackson and Jackson. Fortunately, Leon scored 59 and got everybody's hopes for some entertainment up! ...Unless you listen to the algorithm, that will make you notice that Jackson's main scorers (Julian Alvarez and Tchouameni) are just 23, while Leon has---yes, Pino and
Timber, but also Cristian Romero (25 year old) and Simon (26). This
seems suspiciously similar to what Algo said last year about the same
scouts in the previous cycle. Evidently, Leon prefers to pick slightly
older players, and this lets him match Jackson' stellar performance in
the short term, but could mean that he will be short of breatch before
his opponent. Anyway, even Algo would admit that this race is still open.
Cycle 8: Let me quote what I wrote two years ago about cycle 7 (which
was in the same mid-picking state as cycle 8 is now): "Leon's strategy
of picking a lot of players early in the cycle seems to work better than
in the 6th cycle (also 23 picks in the first year of the cycle): 41
points vs. 20." This time, Leon scored more points per match (3.64 vs.
2.48), with more picks left (6 vs. 1) [the age is practically the same,
21.0 vs. 21.2]. Leon is clearly improving his game, and this could
finally be his cycle.
--
Cheers
milivella
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