Captain Sensible – Salah leads Aguero in polls and data for Gameweek 3

Fantasy Premier League managers have been presented with a much more clear-cut captaincy discussion this week, but there’s still plenty to analyse before the Gameweek 3 deadline.

Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) is the stand-out candidate with Liverpool hosting Brighton and Hove Albion, while Sergio Aguero (£11.0m) is his main competitor.

However, there are, as ever some interesting differential candidates worth looking at.

We’ve gone over the results of our most recent poll and the underlying data to help you pick the best one once again.

THE CAPTAIN POLL

It is Salah who runs away with our Captain Poll for the second time this season. As of Saturday morining around 16,000 Fantasy managers had cast their vote to give the Egyptian a 48 percent share.

However, even though a home fixture against Brighton is considered just as appealing as the Gameweek 1 hosting of West Ham, Salah should fall well short of the majority he enjoyed for the first weekend of the season.

49.74 percentage points separated him and Gameweek 1 runner-up Aguero two weeks ago. This time around the gap is much smaller, the Manchester City man’s 22 percent backing trimming Salah’s lead to just 26 percent.

There are two main factors in why that change has occurred. The first is Aguero himself, who has emerged as a much stronger candidate than was initially expected following his Gameweek 2 hat-trick against Huddersfield. No player in the league has had as many shots on goal as Aguero and this week he travels to face a Wolves defence that has already been breached four times. The only thing that tempers Aguero’s appeal will be rotation once again. While he has now started the last 15 home matches that he was fit and available for, on the road in 2017/18 Gabriel Jesus (£10.5m) featured from the beginning more times than him, 12 starts to eight.

The second factor has been the form of Sadio Mané (£9.8m), who has outscored Salah in both Gameweeks so far and has matched him for shots in the box (six) and accurate ones too (four). So it’s no surprise to see the Senegalese international in the running for a third-place finish in the poll this week, with eight percent of the votes.

Expected to run Mané close for third place is Arsenal’s main man Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.0m). He is also around the eight percent mark ahead of an appealing fixture, this week at home to West Ham, even after blanking in the first two outings of 2018/19. Those backing Aubameyang may well be members of the Salah-less 45 percent who are worried about Aguero’s place in the Man City side.

Benjamin Mendy (£6.2m) completes the poll’s current top five after continuing his fine start to the season against Huddersfield. The Manchester City defender has four assists in his first two matches and has touched the ball in opposing final thirds more often than anyone else in his classification.

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