How to use Statz Fantasy Projections

Overview

The Statz Fantasy Projections page is built for one purpose: helping you make better fantasy football decisions, faster. Instead of spending hours manually researching fixtures, form, and matchups, our model does the heavy lifting — projecting each player’s expected fantasy points output for their upcoming fixture across three of the biggest fantasy football games available today.

Where to Find Fantasy Projections

From the Statz homepage, click the “Projections” tab in the top menu bar, then select “Fantasy” from the dropdown. Once on the page, you’ll see the Fantasy tab highlighted in the sub-navigation alongside Fixtures, Team, Player, Best Bets, and Player Props.

How to Use

Understanding the Page Layout

The Fantasy Projections page is clean by design. Along the top you have two filter dropdowns — All Teams and All Positions — and to their right, three game tabs: FPL, Fan Team, and OPTA. The table below updates instantly based on your selections. Each row in the table represents one player in an upcoming fixture, ranked by their projected fantasy points for that game week.

Reading the Projections

The FPL Points (and equivalent Fan Team/OPTA Points) column shows the average projected fantasy score if this fixture were played repeatedly, assuming each player starts. The model draws on:

Weighted average performance over the last 30 games for both player and opponent
Home/away performance splits
Opposition defensive or attacking strength
Historical player data at the position level

What the numbers mean in practice:

A projection of 8.98 for Cole Palmer doesn’t mean he’ll score exactly 8.98 points — it means if this fixture played out 100 times, our model expects him to average 8.98 FPL points per game. In reality he might return 2 points or 18 points on any given week, but 8.98 is the expected value.

This expected value framing is the same logic professional bettors use — you’re not trying to be right every time, you’re trying to make decisions that are right on average.

The Three Fantasy Game Tabs

FPL (Fantasy Premier League)

The default tab, and the world’s most popular fantasy football game. When FPL is selected, the final column shows projected FPL Points, calculated combining our stat level player projections with the FPL scoring system:

Goals scored: 4pts (MID), 5pts (FWD), 6pts (DEF/GK)
Assists: 3pts
Clean sheets: 1pt (MID), 4pts (DEF/GK)
Bonus points, saves, appearance points and defensive contributions are also factored in

From the current data, the top three FPL projections for this gameweek are:

Hugo Ekitiké (Liverpool vs Burnley) projected for 6.24 FPL Points
Cody Gakpo (Liverpool vs Burnley) projected for 6.21 FPL Points
Erling Haaland (Man United vs Man City) projected for 6.15 FPL Points

As you can see there is not a standout FPL captaincy option this week, with all three being very close in projected points.

Best used for: Weekly captain selection, transfer decisions, and identifying premium vs. budget options by position.

Fan Team

Switching to the Fan Team tab updates the projections column to reflect Fan Team’s scoring system, which differs from FPL in several important ways — most notably in how it rewards/penalises players using more statistics and player involvement. Fan Team is a daily/weekly fantasy format, meaning team construction and player selection strategies differ significantly from FPL’s season-long approach. Therefore, this page is perfect for building your new team each week!

Also, for FanTeam, we have added a Value column (Points/Price). As you are building a new team each week it is essential that you make the most out of your budget. In the image above, we have selected to see just Forwards and the top FanTeam player selections for Value are:

Igor Thiago (Chelsea vs Brentford) – 0.77 projected value
Eliezer Mayenda (Sunderland vs Crystal Palace) – 0.54 projected value
Raúl Jiménez (Leeds vs Fulham) – 0.52 projected value

As you can see, Igor Thiago is a no-brainer pick at his low price of 6.6 million!

OPTA

The OPTA tab uses OPTA’s scoring system, powered by their industry-leading data. OPTA points reflect a comprehensive set of on-ball actions and are widely respected as one of the most statistically rigorous scoring frameworks. It isn’t actually a ‘fantasy’ game as such but bookmakers are now offering it as a betting market for some fixtures. The market is OPTA Player of the Match (POTM) – which player gets the highest OPTA points score in a select match.

OPTA scoring rewards:

Passing and chance creation
Defensive actions (tackles won, interceptions, clearances)
Shots and goal contributions
Overall match involvement

Because OPTA scoring is more holistic than FPL or Fan Team, you’ll often see different players rising up the rankings — particularly midfielders who contribute heavily to build-up play and also defensive actions but don’t always register goals or assists.

We have added a column here called, OPTA Floor Points. This is each players projected points without goals + assists – how many points the player would be expected to score without any goal involvements. This highlights players who score big without relying on goals, therefore being heavily involved in the all-round game. The top 3 for OPTA Floor Points from the image above are:

Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool vs Burnley) – 23.17 projected floor points
Youri Tielemans (Aston Villa vs Everton) – 21.89 projected floor points
Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool vs Burnley) – 21.80 projected floor points

As you can see the scoring system favours busy midfielders/defenders that don’t rely on goal involvements.

The Filter Dropdowns

All Teams

On each Fantasy tab, this dropdown lets you narrow projections to specific clubs, or keep it on “All Teams” to see the full ranked list. Filtering by team is useful when:

You’re deciding between two players from the same club
You want to quickly assess which of players offers the best value compared to the OPTA POTM markets in a given fixture
You’re preparing for a chip week (Wildcard, Free Hit) and building around a specific team’s fixture

Tip: Select both Teams in an upcoming match to see head to head player projections.

All Positions

Use this dropdown to filter the table by position — essential when you have a specific transfer decision to make.

Available positions:

FWD (Forwards) — Strikers and attacking forwards. Sort here when choosing your premium striker or budget forward option.
MID (Midfielders) — The deepest position in FPL, where premium and mid-price options compete. Usually the highest-value position for captaincy.
DEF (Defenders) — Filter here when choosing attacking full-backs or assessing clean sheet potential by fixture.
GK (Goalkeepers) — Useful for identifying the highest-projecting keeper when rotating between two budget options.

Pro tip: Combine the position filter with the game tab to get position-specific rankings for each scoring system. For example, filtering to DEF on the Fan Team tab may surface different defenders than FPL, due to the higher reward for defensive actions.

Limitations and Best Practices

What the Projections Don’t Factor In

Team news and injuries — A confirmed absence changes projections entirely. Always check team news before finalising your squad.
Set-piece changes — If a player’s corner or penalty-taking role has recently changed, this may not yet be fully reflected.
One-off tactical changes — A manager playing a different system than usual introduces uncertainty the model can’t fully anticipate.
Suspension risk — Projections don’t adjust for players on yellow card warnings.

Best Practices

✅ Use the FPL tab for all FPL captain and transfer decisions
✅ Switch to Fan Team / OPTA tabs when playing those games — don’t rely on FPL projections
✅ Filter by position when making like-for-like transfer comparisons
✅ Stack players from the fixture with the highest combined projected scores
✅ Combine projections with team news and head-to-head history for best results

❌ Don’t ignore the Venue column when two players project similarly
❌ Don’t use projections in isolation — they’re a starting point, not a final answer
❌ Don’t overlook defenders and midfielders with clean sheet potential in tough fixtures

Conclusion

The Statz Fantasy Projections page is the fastest way to identify where the points are coming from this gameweek — across FPL, Fan Team, and OPTA. By using the game tabs, position filters, and team filters in combination, you can zero in on the exact decisions you need to make and back them with data.

Visit statz.ai/projections/fantasy today and build your best team yet.