Here’s hoping for a quieter Friday afternoon/Saturday morning than the one we experienced a fortnight ago.
Then, the momentum behind a widespread Sergio Aguero (£11.3m) captaincy was derailed by an article published in the Guardian suggesting Pep Guardiola was considering dropping his Argentinean striker for the visit of Huddersfield Town.
The considerable number of Fantasy Premier League managers who paid heed to the piece and moved the armband to another asset were “Jacksoned” when Aguero subsequently delivered a 20-point haul in City’s 6-1 win over the Terriers.
The reigning league champions play their second home league match of the season on Saturday evening, with Newcastle United the visitors to the Etihad, and the consensus in the Fantasy community seems to be that Aguero is the runaway favourite captaincy candidate for Gameweek 4.
There are several viable alternatives elsewhere, however, all of whom we’ll explore in the article below.
We begin by running through the Captain Poll on our site before analysing the Opta data and Rate My Team (RMT) numbers ahead of the forthcoming deadline on Saturday morning at 11:30 BST.
The Captain Poll
With 63.8% of the Fantasy Football Scout vote, Aguero is head and shoulders above any other armband option this week.
Aguero has 14 goals in 11 league appearances against the Magpies, eight of which were scored in the last two meetings between the sides at the Etihad.
The Argentinean is the second-most-bought forward of this round and is the most-owned player in his position, sitting in just under 49% of all FPL squads.
City scored 61 home league goals last season at a rate of 3.21 per fixture, while their visitors this weekend kept fewer clean sheets on the road (two) than any other Premier League side.
Benjamin Mendy (£6.4m) has been backed for the captaincy by 1.2% of our community, meanwhile.
Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) is never far away from pole position in these armband polls and the Egyptian is the second-most popular option in our vote, with 11.6% of the nominations going his way.
Leicester have shipped 60+ goals for two seasons running and conceded on three occasions to Liverpool in this fixture last season, with Salah among the scorers: the 2017/18 Golden Boot winner had four shots in that fixture and made seven penalty box touches.
Salah also grabbed a brace in the return fixture in December, while he has delivered attacking returns in all three of his matches this season.
Sadio Mane (£9.9m) and Andrew Robertson (£6.1m) are the other two Reds to feature in our top ten, having been nominated by 1.6% and 1.2% of our voters respectively.
Chelsea are about to embark on an inviting double-header against Bournemouth and Cardiff City at Stamford Bridge and Eden Hazard (£10.6m) has been bought by well over 100,000 new FPL managers with those fixtures in mind.
Hazard sits third in our captain poll with 6.4% of the vote and has form against the Cherries: the Belgian midfielder has scored five goals in six league meetings with the south coast side.
Eddie Howe’s troops have conceded at least 60 goals in each of their three seasons in the top flight, while only Liverpool and Manchester City have attempted more shots than the Blues (52) so far this season.
Marcos Alonso (£6.7m) is the fifth-most popular candidate in our poll, meanwhile; the Chelsea left-back is the most-owned defender in FPL at the time of writing (in 33.7% of teams) and no player in his classification has had more attempts on goal this season.
Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang (£10.9m) is sandwiched by Alonso and Hazard in our vote, with Arsenal up against Cardiff City this weekend.
The Gabonese striker has yet to record an attacking return this season and is up against a defence who have kept more clean sheets than 18 other Premier League sides.
Aubameyang’s form at the end of last season, however, hints that he could explode into life at any moment: no forward scored more goals than the former Borussia Dortmund man (ten) after his debut in Gameweek 26.
Harry Kane (£12.5m) and Theo Walcott (£6.7m) are the only other two players to have attracted more than a 1% share of the vote, meanwhile.
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