You might think that this blog post is out of place here but I'm hoping use some of the data that is  freely available on the internet to demonstrate some of the features of  R and data analysis so please hold in there and its a little break from the norm too

Fantasy Football

I have been persuaded for the first time since I was a young lad to enter a fantasy football team and in doing so I have ended up  entering several private leagues with different groups of friends. There is very little money involved and this is very much just for fun. The last time I entered one of these was before the internet was widespread back in the 1990s. To enter the game you had a buy a national newspaper enter your details on a coupon and mail it in - I don't think transfers and substitutions were even possible back then. How  times have changed since then... Actually the competition is quite fierce and with the internet you now have full control of you team and your squad and can make changes pretty frequently within the rules to you entered team.

I'm playing on the https://fantasy.premierleague.com/ website my team name is Jeff's Degenerates and  there seems to be lots of people who  seem to be having a go at being the next, Pep, Klopp or Jose.

I'll keep you posted of the progress as the season progresses - This is my starting 11 for this week's games with some manual data analysis used during the team selection based of last season's players points total

Jeff's Degenerates Starting 11

Super 6

In slight variant on the fantasy football I've also entered a super 6 league. The gist of this is where you predict the scores of 6 games playing on a Saturday afternoon. You get awarded points for the correct result and more points  if you get the correct score.

I think had a little bit of beginners luck last week there was no data analysis used at all, it was the first games of the season and there was no recent form to go on - I got 4/6 results 3 with the correct score, giving me a total 17 points. I'm not sure how many people play the competition I'm told its at least 10,000 maybe even 100,000. It could be more than that. Anyway my 17 points left me 638 spot across every player -  5 x 3 for the correct score and 2 points  for the correct result

Super 6 - Week 1 scores

These are the scores I have gone with for this week

I'll try and remember to update you how I get on.