Fantacalcio, matchday five: the open accounts and the ones we closed

In fantacalcio you almost always look at the last matchday: whoever scored a 9 starts, whoever scored a 5 goes to the bench. We look at something else, and we repeat it every time because it is the only rule of the method.

You add up the chances a player creates for himself and the ones he serves up to his teammates, you compare the total with his actual goals and assists, and you look at the difference. Whoever produces a lot and collects little is in credit, and credit sooner or later gets cashed in. Whoever collects much more than he produces is in debt, and debt sooner or later gets paid.

The honest thing to say right away is that the balance is drawn on what happens on the pitch, not on ratings: our collection of ratings and fantavoti stops at last season, so here we reason about shots, expected goals and chances served up. Anyone looking for the sports daily's decimal ratings will not find them here.

What we said two weeks ago

On 4 September we put five names in credit and four in debt. Two matchdays have passed, and it is time to see how it ended, before asking for trust for the next list.

Lautaro Martínez was the first of the credits: ten shots and zero goals inside the team that was creating more than anyone. On matchday three he scored 2, from 1.86 of chances. Credit cashed in.

Kieron Bowie was the riskiest bet, a Sassuolo forward with five attempts and no goals. He scored on matchday four, with a 0.09 chance late on against Juventus. Here too the account came good, even if in a way the numbers could not have predicted.

Federico Dimarco we had flagged because a defender who creates that much brings bonus points. On matchday three he served up three chances for 0.98 expected goals, and one became a goal. Half a point in our favour.

Armand Lauriente did not. He had thirteen shots and zero goals then, he has sixteen and zero now: on matchday three he shot three times, on matchday four he was left without a single attempt. Not only was the credit not cashed in, it grew.

Gonçalo Ramos neither. In two matchdays he shot once, for 0.06 expected goals. When the volume collapses like that, credit stops being an opportunity and becomes a minutes problem.

On the debts it went better. Hassane Kamara, Hakan Calhanoglu and Gabriele Bracaglia added nothing more to their haul in two matchdays, and they were exactly the three names we had flagged as inflated. Only Martin Baturina kept doing the opposite of what the numbers said: another goal on matchday three, worth 0.03.

Six predictions out of nine in the right direction. That is a good balance and it is not a boast: over two matchdays, with these samples, six out of nine is also compatible with luck. The point of writing it down is that the account is kept in public, always, not only when it comes good.

The open credits today

The biggest in Serie A carries the name of Paulo Dybala, and it has a particular shape.

Fourteen shots, 1.64 expected goals, zero goals. So far that would be a normal slow start. The point is on the other side: he has served up 16 chances to his teammates, for 3.48 expected goals in total, and those are the highest playmaker numbers in the league. Four of those chances became goals. A player who creates that much and has not yet scored is the textbook case of open credit, and he plays in a team that enters the box 53 times in four matches.

The second name is still Lauriente, and at this point it has to be said with a note of caution: sixteen attempts without a goal, 1.62 expected goals accumulated, and a rate of return that last year, per ninety minutes, was regularly in line with his output. The credit is there. If, however, his shot volume stays at the level of the last two matchdays, it stays on paper.

Then there is Inter's attacking department, which is almost entirely in credit. Lautaro Martínez has 2 goals from 2.99 expected goals, Marcus Thuram 2 from 2.50, Francesco Pio Esposito 2 from 2.31. Three forwards who have produced almost eight goals' worth of chances and scored six between them, in a team that creates 12.98 expected goals in four matchdays. These are not names to discover, they are names to keep.

The list closes with Tasos Douvikas, 1 goal from 2.66 of chances, and Gonçalo Ramos, 1 from 2.33. The first plays in a Como that enters the box more than almost anyone, the second has the minutes problem mentioned above.

The debts, meaning who you are about to overpay for

Hakan Calhanoglu has 2 goals from 0.09 expected goals. It is not a typo: three attempts in four matchdays, and two went in. It is the biggest debt in the league in proportion, and it concerns a player who cost a lot at auction.

Antonio Raimondo has 4 goals from 2.26 expected and is the surprise top scorer of the tournament. Here the message is subtler: 2.26 expected goals in four matchdays is a real figure, the figure of a starter who shoots inside the box. He is not a debt to run from, he is a debt not to pay as if he were five goals a matchday.

Martin Baturina stays on the list with 2 goals from 0.42, Edon Zhegrova has 2 goals from 0.41, Diego Moreira 2 from 0.42, Alphadjo Cissè 2 from 0.48. These are all cases where two difficult attempts went in early. It happens, and it happens to many: the mistake is building your lineup on that kind of rate of return.

On the opposite front, those who are scoring a lot and deserve it: Donyell Malen has 5 goals from 4.70 expected goals of his own. A forward who scores exactly what he creates is the only one with neither credit nor debt, and he is the kind of player who in fantacalcio is always worth the price he carries.

The number nobody is watching: penalties

In four matchdays of Serie A, two penalties have been awarded in total, one to Cagliari and one to Genoa. Two.

It is a very low number, and it has to be kept in mind in two ways. The first: paying for a player because he is the designated penalty taker, in this start to the season, is giving you nothing. The second, more useful: penalties are one of the few bonuses that always revert to the mean, so the teams that have not had any so far will have some. Whoever has in their squad the penalty taker of a team that enters the box often, quite simply, has not cashed in yet.

On the defensive front the account is simpler. Roma have conceded one goal in four matches and kept a clean sheet three times; Cagliari have 2 goals conceded, with a completely different way of defending, that is, blocking the box instead of pressing. Those are the two units to have, and for reasons that explain each other.

The honest point

What we do here is not a prediction, it is a bet on the mean. A player in credit is a player who, if he keeps doing the same things, will go back to scoring as much as he creates. We do not know when, and we do not know if he will stay on the pitch long enough for it to happen: the list of open credits is full of players who got injured or lost their place before cashing in.

And then there is the limit that applies to everyone: four matchdays are few. A forward shoots eight or ten times in a month, and one deflection can shift the whole balance. That is why we publish the mistakes too, and why today's list should be read as a list of probabilities, not certainties.

For matchday five our strongest pick remains Dybala, with Roma-Inter at 18:00 on Saturday, the match in which two teams that enter the box more than anyone else take space away from each other.

T.L.

Do you want to see how much each team really deserves its league position? The Meritometro compares actual points and expected points. For those who want the models and not the headlines, there is the Nerd Zone.