Anytime and First Goalscorer Picks

How these picks are built

A player's scoring rate comes from his actual goals and minutes this season plus last season at the same club, pulled towards the league starter rate so a short sample is not mistaken for his true level. That rate is then scaled by the expected goals our match model gives his team, which already carries opponent strength. The anytime and first goal chances follow from there, and first goal chance always allows for the match finishing goalless.

Every selection assumes the player starts. Players with fewer than 450 minutes or five appearances are left out rather than given an estimated rate, and no number here is invented where the data does not exist.

Tested on 430 Premier League matches and 9,460 player starts, split by date so nothing was fitted on the matches it was judged against. Recent form, opponent defensive numbers, head to head records and bookmaker prices were all tested and left out because none of them improved accuracy. On the unseen matches the picks came in at 9.8 percent scoring against 9.8 percent actual, and players rated above 40 percent scored 47.8 percent of the time.

Odds are the best available UK bookmaker price and are shown separately from our model probability. The value rating compares that probability with the price. One star means the price offers little or no positive margin, while five stars means the modelled expected return is at least 30 percent. Players without a genuine bookmaker price are left unrated.