Gameweek 37 has been billed as one of the most important of the season – albeit before today’s dreadful returns – so our latest metrics article looks at the chips and selections in play among the top 10,000 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers.

The Chips

We start, as usual, by looking at the chips activated for Gameweek 37 by those top managers.

More than half the top 10k managers (53.72%) have activated the Triple Captain chip, while 23.8% of them are using the Bench Boost as an alternative. This is in stark contrast to Double Gameweek 34, when Bench Boost chips were in the majority.

All in all, this raises the total chip usage, with one Gameweek remaining, to the following:

As we can see, the chips are not completely dead as factors in the season quite yet.

We should see around 10% and 7% Bench Boost and Triple Captains used next week.

However, let’s focus on the current active chips for now.

As the Triple Captain is the most used, we’ll first assess the players that have been trusted as the key targets.

Predictably, the Gameweek captaincy and Triple Captaincy is focused on three players: Harry Kane, Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling.

Kane is the favorite pick and is captained by 56.12% of the top 10k, while 34.02% have turned to the Spurs striker with the Triple Captain.

Jesus commands 23.79% and 12.58% respectively, with Sterling placing third with 14.52% and 6.19%.

That is a surprisingly big lead for Kane, exceeding the percentages of Jesus and Sterling combined.

Following Kane’s blank at The Hawthorns, the performance from the Man City duo now looks crucial on the current standings, even before the midweek fixtures.

Let’s now look at how many managers own different combinations of those three key players.

We see that 56.5% have covered them all, while an equal percentage were content to miss out on one of the three.

Meanwhile, the 23.8% Bench Boosting managers will hope that their reserves will be enough to keep pace with the Triple Captain scores, no doubt hugely encouraged by the start for Kane.

Here are the most popular players sitting on the bench for those managers in the top 10k.

Surprisingly, Burnley defenders are the among the most selected bench players despite having just a single away fixture against Arsenal.

Also, Wes Morgan and Ben Chilwell remain popular options, regardless of Leicester City’s woeful form.

While this average bench currently looks weak, Mat Ryan has already provided a nice advantage with his eight points, so that’s been an early success for the Bench Boost minority.

Squad Selection

With the extra fixtures on offer, managers appeared justified to spend points on extra transfers.

This week, I’ve recorded the highest average point deductions in the top 10k this season with -4.22 points deducted with the following distribution:

This has allowed most squads to have a full Double Gameweek quota, with the average number of players with double fixtures as high as 11.71 players per manager.

Now let’s look at the most popular players that make up that number.

The figure shows that while the trio of Kane, Jesus and Sterling each enjoy above 80% ownership, David De Gea, Chris Smalling and Mohamed Salah are the next most popular players.

To get a better idea of their likely influence on the Gameweek, let’s look at the effective ownership that takes the captaincy and benching into account.

We see that the average team includes 3.15 Spurs players, 2.95 Man City and 1.64 Man United players.

All the other Premier League teams supply a differential below 1.0 effective player.

Zooming in on the Spurs and City assets, we get the following breakdown:

The usual Spurs assets all have close effective ownership, with Son Heung-min (38.06%) leading the way after Kane, despite his recent lack of form.

Ben Davies (27.29%), Christian Eriksen (26.81%) and Jan Vertonghen (23.86%) are all each owned by around a quarter of the managers.

Davies was of course benched today, while Vertonghen was the only Spurs defender to return points having been withdrawn before West Brom’s winner.

Dele Alli is the differential claiming just 15.67% effective ownership.

Looking at City’s assets, after Jesus and Sterling above 100% effective ownership, there is a real spread on show due to the uncertainty surrounding Pep Guardiola’s selection.

The main picks are Nicolas Otamendi (16.38%), David Silva (14.05%) and Leroy Sane (13.66%).

I personally opted for a risk on Bernardo Silva, who is in just 0.81% of the top 10k teams, while I also have the Triple Captain on Sterling, so I’ve gone high stakes.

City’s performance and points output on Sunday already looks vital for my Gameweek, and that will surely be the case for all Fantasy managers.

The top 10k and, indeed, the entire FPLcommunity will now be split between those who want City to rout Huddersfield Town, and those hoping for damage limitation.