Where SquadCheck’s data comes from

Most of the site rests on the official Fantasy Premier League data, published by the league for its fantasy game. It is free and needs no key. From it SquadCheck reads:

• every registered player, his club and his position;
• each player’s availability status — available, doubtful, injured, suspended — and the news line that goes with it;
• per-player match statistics, including minutes, goals, assists, expected goals (xG), expected assists and the Bonus Points System score;
• the fixture list and results.

Because the fantasy game runs on the same data, the availability statuses are maintained carefully and updated often, usually after club press conferences. That is why SquadCheck uses them as the single source of truth for who is out — see how return dates are read.

Lineups come from the Premier League’s own match-centre data: the starting eleven, the formation, substitutions, goals and cards, and the referee. These drive the pitch graphics and the predicted lineups. Player photos and club badges load from the league’s image servers. About four in ten players have no photo there, and for those the site shows initials rather than someone else’s picture.

Expected goals (xG) measure the quality of the chances a team creates: a shot’s xG is the share of similar shots that end up as goals. SquadCheck does not run its own shot model. It takes each player’s xG from the official feed and adds up the players to get a team’s xG for a match, and adds up the matches to get the season tables.

Two consequences are worth knowing. A team’s xG here can differ slightly from figures elsewhere, because every provider uses its own shot model. And the “deserved” table — where each club would sit on chance quality alone — is SquadCheck’s own calculation from those totals, not an official statistic.

The Model vs Market page compares SquadCheck’s match model with the bookmakers’ closing odds, the best public benchmark there is for how likely each result was. The odds come from the free historical files published by football-data.co.uk: average closing odds, or a single bookmaker’s where no average exists.

They are used for that comparison and nothing else. The match predictions elsewhere on the site are not built from odds. A match enters the comparison only once both teams have played four earlier matches, so in the first weeks of a season the page has nothing to show yet. SquadCheck does not take bets, link to bookmakers or recommend wagers.

• Twice a day, at 05:15 and 17:15 UTC, the official feed and the match data are read again.
• On weekends and on weekday evenings with fixtures, they are also read every half hour through the playing hours, so results, lineups and late fitness news usually arrive within the hour.
• Scheduled runs can start a few minutes late. The odds on the Model vs Market page are fetched when that page is built, and kept for a day.

The official feed is excellent on availability and thin on detail. It has no match ratings, key passes, dribbles, duels or per-player shot counts, and it does not grade injuries or say when an injury happened — only when the news was published. Several of the site’s models were designed with those fields in mind, and each guide says where their absence matters, most of all in how Power Loss is calculated.

It also covers only the Premier League. Other leagues have no free official feed of the same quality, so SquadCheck does not cover them rather than cover them badly.

SquadCheck is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Premier League or Fantasy Premier League.