The new season of The Big Interview starts in a little under three weeks – we’re back with one of my favourite players, Gianluca Vialli, on August 4.
This will also be the first episode of our partnership with FanDuel, the next generation of fantasy football. That partnership means we can still give you the podcasts for free –we won’t even need to do another round of crowdfunding – and it also gives you the chance to play against me and the podcast team every week. More on that later.
We think a lot of you are going to enjoy playing FanDuel against us and other listeners of The Big Interview, and one of the reasons for that is the way the game is scored, which is revolutionary for fantasy football.
The Premier League game was built by football fans like us and is driven by OPTA stats. Players get points not just for goals, assists and clean sheets, but for interceptions, tackles, passes, shots on target and chances created.
I asked the guys at FanDuel to show me the most effective scorers at the Euros. It will come as no surprise that the best performer was Antoine Greizmann.
A FanDuel contest is played out over one round of fixtures – not dragged out over an entire season – and Griezmann put in the biggest score of any player in the Euros in France’s win over the Republic of Ireland. His 63.25 points in that game break down like this:
2 goals = 2 x 10 = 20
5 shots on target = 5 x 5 = 25
2 fouls drawn = 2 x 0.5 = 1
9 series of five passes completed = 9 x 0.25 = 2.25
3 tackles won = 3 x 5 = 15
Pretty interesting, no? And it gives a completely different picture than old-school fantasy football.
But there’s more to consider. For that game, Griezmann would have used up £11.8m of your £100m salary cap. These salaries change with every round of fixtures played, so if a player starts out with low expectations but heats up – think N’Golo Kante last season – his price is going to reflect that. To beat the game and your opponents, you have to stay on top of all the players in the league, every week you play.
It’s just as important to predict who in the bottom rungs of the salary list could produce a big game. During the Euros, the biggest bang-for-buck came from Albania’s Ledian Memushaj, a 29-year-old midfielder who plays his club football for Pescara in Italy.
He would have cost you just £6.6m before the game against Romania, but returned 50.5 points that day, largely due to the six chances he created, one of which was an assist on Armando Sadiku’s winning goal.
But who are going to be the under-valued players in the Premier League this season? And which of the superstars are going to deliver when you need them to most?
Check out fanduel.co.uk for more information, including a countdown to the launch of the app for their Premier League game. And listen out for how you can play against me and the podcast team in the new season.
And look out for Luca on August 4. We’ve already recorded two other episodes for the new season, and I’m in London next week to record two more. Thanks for your support, and keep listening.
G
