Captain Sensible – FPL Gameweek 2

A genuine captaincy conundrum is not something Fantasy Premier League managers have experienced much this calendar year. For the second half of last season (and well before this point, in truth), the common sense – some would say “dullard” – approach was to set the armband on Mohamed Salah and forget as the Egyptian delivered attacking returns at a freakishly consistent rate.

Over 1.5 million FPL managers indeed placed the armband on Salah for Gameweek 1 of this season, more than double the amount of the next-most captained asset, Harry Kane.

Salah duly delivered with a comfortingly familiar eight-point haul in Liverpool’s 4-0 win over West Ham United, yet here we are, a week later, considering overlooking the man who racked up a record-breaking 303 points in FPL last season and who scored/assisted a goal in 27 of his 36 league appearances in 2017/18.

In the article below, we first assess the fallout of the Gameweek 2 Captain Poll before analysing the Opta data and Rate My Team (RMT) ratings ahead of the forthcoming deadline on Saturday morning at 11:30 BST.

The Captain Poll

Well over 12,700 of our site users had voted in our Captain Poll by the time this article was written and as such the results are a decent barometer of what the wider community are thinking with just over 24 hours to go until the Gameweek 2 deadline.

With around 44% of the public vote at the time of writing, Sergio Aguero (£11.0m) heads the list of nominations. Manchester City were mightily impressive in the 2-0 win over Arsenal last Sunday – only Everton had more attempts on goal than the league champions (12) in Gameweek 1 – and next welcome a Huddersfield Town side who shipped three goals at home to Chelsea in their opening fixture.

The Terriers’ 0-0 draw with City at the Etihad in May will still be fresh in FPL bosses’ minds, with David Wagner’s troops limiting the Citizens to two shots on target in the whole 90 minutes and leaving Manchester with what turned out to be an invaluable point in their fight to beat the drop.

The backdrop to that fixture has to be reiterated, though: Pep Guardiola’s side had already wrapped up the league by that point, while Huddersfield were scrapping for their lives at the wrong end of the table. Aguero, indeed, didn’t feature in that match, having been ruled out of City’s run-in after knee surgery.

Aguero blanked last weekend but the 32.5% of FPL managers who own the Argentinean forward would have been looking beyond Gameweek 1 to this run of half-dozen fixtures that City face between now and the end of September – kicking off with the Terriers at home on Sunday afternoon.

Only three of the ten-most captained players of Gameweek 1 actually found the back of the net and all of them feature in the match at Selhurst Park on Monday evening.

Mohamed Salah (£13.0m), who had garnered 26.5% of the Captain Poll votes at the time of writing, was one of those players.

Salah scored in this fixture last season when Liverpool left south London with a 2-1 victory, as did Sadio Mane (£9.6m), who is the sixth-most backed captain ahead of Gameweek 2 with 2.6% of the nominations.

Wilfried Zaha (£7.0m), who was the only other name to score in the list of the ten most-captained Gameweek 1 players, registered an assist in that win for the Reds at Selhurst Park in 2017/18.

Liverpool and Palace also met in Gameweek 2 last season, albeit at Anfield, in a match that Salah started only on the bench.

Palace only kept four clean sheets at home last season, while Jurgen Klopp’s side registered just five clean sheets on their travels – but as we’ll discuss later, both sides’ defences have made huge strides since the turn of the year.

After his eye-catching, lung-busting performance in Gameweek 1, Benjamin Mendy (£6.1m) is something of a maverick choice of captain for the 5.8% of voters who have backed the French left-back.

Mendy’s total score of 15 points was the highest of any defender in Gameweek 1 and the former Monaco wing-back has recently overtaken Aaron Wan-Bissaka as the most-bought defender of this round: over 250,000 new FPL managers have acquired Mendy over the last seven days.

Mendy has already matched the total assist count of Fabian Delph and Danilo for last season, both of whom deputised at left-back in the Frenchman’s injury-enforced absence.

Almost 750,000 FPL managers surprisingly handed Harry Kane (£12.5m) the armband in Gameweek 1, with the World Cup Golden Boot winner’s participation at St James’ Park in some doubt before kick-off due to his late return to pre-season training.

Kane subsequently banished fears of a non-appearance in the north-east by playing the whole 90 minutes of Spurs’ 2-1 victory, though was distinctly off the pace and didn’t manage a single shot on target.

However, a home fixture against newly-promoted Fulham, who have real injury problems in the centre of their defence, after another full week of training has persuaded 3.4% of our voters to back Kane to end his August goal drought; the England striker is the fourth-most popular captaincy pick in our poll.

Richarlison (£6.6m) completes the top five, with 3.0% of the votes cast directed his way. The Brazilian opened his Everton account with a brace in the 2-2 draw with Wolves last Saturday and the Toffees now face a Southampton side who have kept just three clean sheets in 17 away league matches.

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