Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. While it has been tough to go without Premier League soccer for the last three months, its return presents an opportunity to explore EPL DFS. I have been lobbying the powers that be at FantasyAlarm for some time now to turn my love of EPL DFS into content for the site, but the timing was never right. Until now.
If you too have been thinking about dipping your toe into EPL DFS, now is the perfect time to give it a try. With most major sports in the U.S. still well over a month away, why not take this opportunity to watch some English soccer and have a stake in the games as well? With that in mind, we present to you the strategies and tips that will help you be a successful DFS soccer player. Our soccer coverage at FantasyAlarm will focus on the Premier League, at least for now, but these strategies apply to most DFS soccer contests regardless of the league or competition. The strategies below are broken up into a few different categories, the first of which is:
Most of the DFS tips you’ve heard for other sports also apply to Soccer, including:
1. Watch the games.
You could argue that watching the games is more important for soccer than for other sports. While advanced stats have made strides in recent seasons, it is still awfully difficult to quantify the impact individual players have on the game. For instance, chances created are a solid indicator of how threatening a team or player is on the attack, but it doesn’t capture a cross that is just barely out of reach of its intended recipient or a great attacking chance that is erased by a borderline offsides call. I prefer to use advanced stats, for all sports, to complement what I am observing with my own eyes, and not as a substitute for watching the games.
Perhaps the most valuable part of watching the games is seeing how the players interact with each other. Does Chris Wood have the same chemistry with Jay Rodriguez that he has with Ashley Barnes? Who does Son Heung-min look for when he has possession in the final third? Watching the games and learning the answers to these questions is especially important when it comes to our next tip.
2. Stacking is a viable strategy, especially for GPPs
Unlike other sports, stacks for DFS soccer are best kept to two-player stacks. In small slates or when Liverpool is an overwhelming favorite you might want to stack more than two players, but two-player stacks are ideal.
Perhaps the most common stack is a goalkeeper and a defender from the same team. In this stack, you are chasing a clean sheet, which earns three points for the defender and five for the goalkeeper on DraftKings. Hopefully, if your team keeps a clean sheet, you’re also getting a fair amount of tackles, passes intercepted, and clearances from your defender. Oftentimes the goal of this kind of stack is to save money that you can spend elsewhere. You can obviously stack Ederson and Benjamin Mendy, but it could cost nearly a third of your budget, and both of those players will likely have a lot of standalone value. Stacking Martin Dubravka and Danny Rose, on the other hand, will cost a lot less but could pay off just as handsomely if Newcastle can keep a clean sheet.
The other stacking strategy is to choose two attackers from the same team. As we alluded to above, it is best to choose two players who you think will link up in attack. If you can get a goal and an assist from the same play, you will have a big advantage over other entries. With that in mind, it often makes sense to stack a wide midfielder with a central attacker. The idea is that the midfielder will play crosses into the box, and the attacker will get on the end of one of those crosses and put it in the net. If you play a midfielder who will take corners and free kicks, you will give yourself even more opportunities for your stacked attackers to link up.
As you may have noticed, both of these stacks are somewhat risky. You’re mostly hoping for goals or clean sheets for these stacks to pay off, and both of those are hard to count on. For that reason, I prefer stacks for GPPs. For cash games, it can be better to spread out the risk with players from more games, especially in bigger slates.
3. Know the differences in scoring between sites
While DraftKings is all about crosses, on FanDuel attackers earn three points for chances created. While crosses tend to favor wide midfielders, chances created can favor central midfielders like Kevin de Bruyne and Jack Grealish who always seem to be involved when their teams attack.
FanDuel also awards 1.3 points for every clearance, which increases the viability of central defenders, especially those who are going against the top sides. Players like Tyrone Mings and James Tarkowski can be awfully valuable on FanDuel, but on DraftKings they are borderline unplayable outside of a Goalkeeper/Defender stack, or on the rare occasion they head in a goal from a corner kick.
In DraftKings, you play two forwards, two midfielders, two defenders, a goalkeeper and a UTIL. FanDuel has four FWD/MID spots, two defenders, and a goalkeeper. Thus, you have a lot more flexibility on FanDuel. If you want, you can play only high-upside forwards or perhaps go safer and load up on midfielders. On DraftKings, identifying a couple of players you like who are eligible at both forward and midfield can help unlock different possible lineups.
4. And the similarities
Both sites value goalkeepers more or less the same. FanDuel awards more points for a clean sheet than for a win, and they award (slightly) more points for a save than they take away for a goal against. DraftKings, on the other hand, awards the same number of points for a win as for a clean sheet. DK awards two points for a save but takes away two points for a goal against. But those differences are very minor. In general, if a goalkeeper is a good play on one site, he is a good play on both sites.
5. Use the Vegas odds to your advantage
Perhaps the most obvious position where the odds come into play is at the goalkeeper. Securing five points on DraftKings for a win can be quite valuable, especially in cash games. Of course, the keepers that are big favorites are often the most expensive. It might be easier to use the odds to find the keepers and defenders who are most likely to keep a clean sheet. Be sure to look at both the over/under as well as which team is favored to win.
Using the Vegas odds for attackers can be trickier. You obviously want to target games with high totals and teams with high implied goals totals, but even if you pick the correct game and the correct team, you still have to pick the correct players. Manchester City can be a great source of attacking returns, but with so many strong attacking players, it can be very difficult to pick the ones who will actually score. Teams that score fewer goals but only have a couple of reliable attackers like Aston Villa or Watford can be even more useful, especially if they have a high implied goal total.
The other complication in relying on Vegas odds is that when a top-six side like Manchester City or Liverpool is a heavy favorite, the most expensive players could all be from that team. Sometimes it could be worthwhile to actually fade that team, especially in a GPP.
Specific Soccer Strategies
1. Don’t rely on goal-scorers for cash games
Goals (and assists) come and go, but crosses and, to a lesser extent, chances created, are generally pretty consistent. As we mentioned above, even if you identify a team that will score some goals, you still have to pick the players who actually score. It may seem like Jamie Vardy is involved in every single Leicester goal, but there are actually plenty of times he will get shut out even if Leicester scores a couple of goals. Vardy won’t swing in crosses or complete a lot of passes, so if he’s not scoring goals, or at least putting shots on goal, he doesn’t have very much fantasy value.
2. Use defenders who play on the outside and will swing in crosses
This is more important for DraftKings, but even on FanDuel you want wide defenders who have a chance to get involved in the attack and pick up assists. If you can find a defender who will pick up a clean sheet, and also provide an attacking return you can score a lot of fantasy points in a hurry.
3. Wins and clean sheets are more important than saves, especially for cash games
Saves can be a double-edged sword. If a keeper picks up a lot of saves, that means they will see a lot of shots, and a lot of shots usually lead to a good number of goals against. Chasing saves can be good for tournaments, especially if you can save money on your keeper, but in cash games it is often worth it to pay a bit more for a keeper who is likely to win and has a strong chance at a clean sheet, even if they’re unlikely to have more than one or two saves.
Strategies for the restart of the 2020 season:
1. Put even less stock in home-field advantage than normal
I tend to believe that home-field advantage, at least in the states, has more to do with travel and the comforts/routine of being at home than any effect of the crowds. That being said, the Bundesliga has seen road teams perform far better than normal since their league resumed without fans. It’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions, but at the very least, the days of always playing Mo Salah at home and Roberto Firmino are probably on hold either until the fans return or we have seen them continue to follow the same patterns. I don’t know that I’m ready to throw home-field advantage out the window completely, but nowadays it feels more like a tiebreaker than anything else.
2. Players who won’t get subbed are even more valuable than usual
Teams will have five subs available per game down the stretch instead of the usual three, in part to help players deal with playing so many games in so few days. On top of that, most of these teams have more depth than ever, with many players who were dealing with injuries getting healthy over the past 100 days.
As a result, we can expect more players than ever to play fewer than 90 minutes. Teams like Manchester City are riskier than ever, and players who rarely get subbed like Jack Grealish and James Ward-Prowse are even more valuable.
3. Give an advantage to the best-coached teams
With a brief training camp and a grueling sprint to the finish, we could see the best-coached teams rise to the top. When in doubt, I will probably target players from Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham, and Burnley Leicester City because I think those managers have proven their quality over the years. I think those teams could net a few more wins and keep an extra clean sheet or two down the stretch.
These are the general strategies we will use in creating our EPL DFS Playbooks and Suggested Lineups for the 2020 season restart. As always, you can hit me up in the FANation chat or on Twitter with all of your EPL DFS questions.