Form meets fixtures
Two questions decide most transfers: is he playing well, and is the run ahead kind? Heres every player plotted against both — the top right is where you shop.
Form is relative: each player is judged against his own recent level, not the others — so an established star merely holding a high level can read as quiet, while a lesser name beating his own average looks hot. The ▲▼ figure is points per game only; a players height on the plot also weighs saves and clean sheets (keepers, defenders) or goals and assists (midfielders, forwards), so the arrow and the verdict can point different ways.
Form is points and expected goal involvement per 90 over a players last six starts, weighted towards the most recent. Its measured against his own baseline — a blend of this season and last, leaning on last season early on and migrating to this season as he builds up games. A player with no prior-season history has no baseline to compare against yet, so we show his scoring without a delta until one forms. The scale is set within each position, so a defender is judged against defenders, not forwards. A player who has fallen well below his own level — the shaded band along the bottom of the plot — is read as out of form, so he is a Leave it even on kind fixtures rather than a buy-the-dip. And because getting in early on a quiet player rests entirely on his run, a dip only earns Get-in-early when the fixtures are clearly kind, not merely better than average; an in-form player is judged on the plainer line.
Fixtures come from our team strength ratings — projected goals for the attacking side, projected goals against for clean sheets. Defenders and keepers are read on the clean-sheet outlook, midfielders and forwards on the attacking one, so the same fixture can be kind for one and unkind for the other.
The swing line is kept deliberately separate from form. Grading what a player did, and previewing the run hes walking into, are two different jobs — blending them into one number hides exactly the thing you want to see. It reads the run relative to the games just played — steady, kinder, or tougher — not how hard the fixtures are in absolute terms; that absolute read is the left-right position on the plot. The gap between the two sides is usually tiny, so we show the direction, not a figure.
A few overlaps are intentional: we count both points and expected involvement, and for midfielders both defensive contribution and points. One thing we dont adjust for fixtures is defensive contribution. Players just back from injury are shown as hollow dots — their height on the plot is provisional, so lead with the fixtures. Anyone with too few recent minutes is marked Low sample rather than hidden.