Gaffer IQ · Section 11 of 22
Idea and approachFixtures
True historical data, exactly as fetched – a manual, less-processed way to read the game for anyone who doesn’t fully trust the engine’s guessing.
- Read time
- ~1 min
- Revised
- 3 Sep 2026
- Status
- Published
Why a second style of view
I wanted to provide a different style of view; instead of providing calculated metrics for what lies ahead, I wanted to provide a page that displays true historical data which relies less on the engine. This gives the user a more open-to-interpretation perspective on fixtures, in the case that they don’t fully trust the engine providing the guessing for them – the Matchups page won’t suit everyone, nor will everyone trust the engine’s guessing and suggestions, so to expand the target audience I realised I needed a way to allow the user to have a more manual way of reading the game.
How it is sourced
To do this, I chose to provide more rigid information that focuses on historical data that doesn’t go through any processing change, and outputs useful data exactly as it was fetched. The understat.com API had everything needed to make this work effectively, meaning minimal data from the FPL API was needed to fill this area of the site.
Terms used here
- Understat
- Not an API, but it fills the gaps the FPL feed leaves: expected goals, six seasons of fixture lists, chronological match timelines, and rosters with position codes and substitution linkage.Explained in The data
- FPL API
- Supplies the spine – squads, prices, positions, fixtures, per-player histories and live gameweek scoring. It has no standings endpoint and no access to any season but the current one.Explained in The data