While Sergio Aguero (£11.3m) can boast a Fantasy Premier League ownership of over 50% and the stock of Romelu Lukaku (£11.0m) begins to slowly climb, the popularity of three other premium forwards has been on a steady decline during this campaign.
Harry Kane (£12.5m), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£10.9m) and Roberto Firmino (£9.5m) all feature in the top five most-sold forwards of the season, each suffering a net transfer loss in every round of 2018/19 – with the exception of Kane in Gameweek 4.
With the international break traditionally – for some FPL managers at least – used to contemplate a Wildcard and premium defenders and midfielders such as Marcos Alonso (£6.8m), Benjamin Mendy (£6.4m), Eden Hazard (£10.7m) and Sadio Mane (£10.0m) in high demand, the sale of a costly forward is a quick way of freeing up cash to jump on the bandwagons elsewhere.
In Lucas Moura (£7.3m), Mane, Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) and – until recently – Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.2m), Kane, Firmino and Aubameyang also have viable midfield alternatives at their respective clubs who are outscoring them in FPL.
It should be said that Kane and Firmino are still owned by more than one in four Fantasy managers at this juncture. How many of the squads that they and Aubameyang sit in are “ghost teams”, of course, is another matter, given their pre-season popularity: not one of the top ten managers in our Live Hall of Fame owns any of the premium forward trio.
Is there any case for their inclusion in our squads going forward or portents that their form is about to take a turn for the better? In this latest Members piece, we analyse their key underlying attacking statistics and consider if any of them are being unfairly overlooked.
Become a Member and access our data
Memberships for the 2018/19 campaign are now available for the price of £15.
Join now to get the following:
- Plot your transfer strategies using the fully interactive Season Ticker.
- Get projections for every Premier League player provided by the Rate My Team statistical model.
- Use Rate My Team throughout the season to guide your selections and transfers.
- Get access to over 130+ exclusive members articles over the season.
- Analyse our OPTA-powered statistic tables specifically tailored for Fantasy Football Managers.
- Use our exclusive tool to build custom stats tables from over 100 OPTA player and team stats.
- View heatmaps and expected goals data for every player.
- Use our powerful comparison tool to analyse players head-to-head.
CLICK HERE TO BECOME A FANTASY FOOTBALL SCOUT MEMBER
