The 2023/24 WAR Team of the Season

The data-backed Overthinking Football Fantrax Premier League Draft Team of the 23/24 Season is here.

Those of you who have been with us for a long time—and those of you who are baseball fans—are likely familiar with the WAR concept or its usage. For those who are new here, we have developed a Wins Above Replacement (WAR) metric for Fantrax Draft Premier League to identify which players are bringing the most value to their teams. The longer explanation of how we calculate WAR can be found here. For those less interested in how the sausage is made, we calculate players’ WAR by comparing their weekly performances to those of the average waiver wire player of their position. After thousands of simulations, we are able to determine how much a player increased their fantasy team’s chances of winning in a given week, and by adding all of those weeks up, can get a complete picture of how many wins an individual player contributed to their fantasy team over the course of a season.

One of the advantages of tracking WAR data across a Premier League campaign is that around this time of year, we end up in a position to name, fairly conclusively, the optimal “above replacement” team of 2023/24.

Since positional value goes up and down year over year, the formation of the WAR team of the year may be different each season. The sole restrictions that we place on this team are that we select only 11 players and those 11 players must fit into a legal Fantrax formation. We also use players’ base positions and do not allow for multi-position eligibility. Yes, that does mean that some great players miss out on the team despite high WAR scores. They’re professional footballers who by definition are probably having a very good year in their career, so we like to think they’ll recover from the snub.

Without further ado, here is your 2023/24 WAR Team of the Season!

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Goalkeeper - Alphonse Areola, West Ham

1.18 WAR, ADP: 399.57, 2.08% drafted

I was totally unsure who would come out top Goalkeeper wise this year before I started looking at the tables for this exercise a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had long absences from some of the old-reliable names and no one has dramatically separated from the pack in WAR terms (that said, Overthinking Football favourite Arijanet Muric has amassed an insane WAR total in just 9 Games and sits in 3rd Overall with an incredible 100% Quality Start rate).

It was West Ham’s Alphonse Areola who eventually took the crown, though, courtesy of his 8.73 xFpts / Game and his 30 Games started. In the end he beat out the 2nd placed Goalkeeper by 0.14 Wins Added. There’s a reason we don’t recommend paying for keepers. Not to mention, predicting year to year performances for keepers is hard and, with David Moyes leaving, Areola will be even tougher to predict next year. But he’s comfortably earned his place in the team this year.

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Defender 1 - Trent Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool

1.89 WAR, ADP: 7.78, 100% drafted

Trent Alexander-Arnold finished as the #2 Defender in WAR last season with a total WAR value of 2.08. As data savvy readers, you’ll probably notice that 1.89 is less than 2.08. The story, as it was for a lot of the premium defenders this year, is one of availability challenges. Trent started 34 Games last season and only 24 this. He’s accumulated WAR this year at a better rate than last time out, even though his Goal and Assist numbers are down. Notably only two players sit within +/- 1 of his 13.26 average xFpts: Andrew Robertson (14.15) and Conor Bradley (12.29). There’s something in the water with these Liverpool full-backs.