The OTHER kind of 'Form'

A couple of days ago, I tried to produce a helpful analysis of what should properly be understood by the often dangerously nebulous term 'form', in which I highlighted the importance of relating individual form to team form, and also suggested that it is useful to view 'form' in different categories - across three different timeframes.

It now occurs to me that there is another, completely separate - rather weird - type of 'form' which is often discussed as being potentially relevant to FPL: a player's record against a specific club.

I am very sceptical as to whether there's any value in this:

1)  The supposed correlations that many FPL fans crow about are rarely statistically significant. (Perhaps a player has had 3 decent hauls in his last 5 outings against a particular club... But he's a fairly prolific player who usually manages at least 2 from 5 against almost everyone, so....??  If he blanks in this next one, it may suddenly look like he has a worse-than-average record against this club rather than a better one!)

2)  As I commented in the earlier post on the shortcomings of FPL's 'Form' statistic, these numbers don't take any account of the particular circumstances that led to hauls (or blanks) over a series of games. Often, the figures cited don't even distinguish between home and away games. They certainly don't deign to remind you if key players were missing from either side in certain fixtures, or only recently back from injury, or if a big - possibly wrong - refereeing call distorted the game outcome.

3)  'Historical trends' are unconvincing, because so much changes over time. Even the player you're focusing on will have developed his skills in certain areas, perhaps radically changed his style of play in some aspects; but also he'll have aged and suffered injuries, very possibly he's become at least a little less incisive than he was four or five years ago. There may also have been huge turnover among his teammates, and/or one or more changes of manager at his club - and hence a major shift in the team's style of play.  And of course, that also goes for the opponents. Beyond the last 2 or 3 seasons, you can't expect these player-against-club records to be revealing of anything very much at all.

However, I do allow a small amount of credence to the potential significance in such a 'successful trend'. While I think it's mostly a dangerous superstition, there are a few instances in which there might be something to it.

Primary goalscorers, we know, are very susceptible to 'vibes': if they can discern a possible 'trend' for scoring more often against a particular club, that may inspire better performances from them against that club and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that can be particularly the case with fixtures that are especially emotionally-charged: derby games, or matches against your strongest traditional rivals/enemies.  As we see in the table above, Mo Salah does 'like' to score against Manchester United! (However, even with that fairly strong trend, I would counter that a large part of Salah's record here can be attributed simply to the fact that United have been mostly pretty awful for the last several years. If they were suddenly to turn things around and start looking a strong defensive side again, a formidable opponent, his previous record against them would be much less persuasive.)

Sometimes, though, these emotional lifts to performance may come from circumstances external to the history of the fixture between the two clubs. The phenomenon of players - and not just goalscorers, but players in every position - rousing themselves to a match-winning performance against a former club (especially if it's a club they've only recently parted from, and on less than amicable terms) is very pronounced; and I tend to put more weight on that in considering FPL selections than on whether Player X often has a good game in the derby.  And few visiting teams come away with anything from Anfield on the weekend that the Hillsborough disaster is commemorated: the emotion of the crowd on that day is utterly overwhelming, and the home players too usually seem fired up to honour the victims with a particularly powerful performance.

So, yes, 'history' does count for something, sometimes; but not for nearly as much as the majority of FPL pundits try to make out - with their comparisons of every player's average haul against every opponent since the dawn of time.....  Charts like that, you can usually ignore.