Just as Sergio Aguero dominated the thinking in Gameweek 7 regarding the Fantasy Premier League captaincy debate, there is another premium forward who is the blindingly obvious candidate for the armband this weekend.
Harry Kane and Tottenham Hotspur welcome Cardiff City to Wembley on Saturday and the England striker, who has attracted over 200,000 new FPL owners this week, will surely be handed the captaincy by the vast majority of the Fantasy managers who own him.
For those who don’t, the leading Premier League goalscorer, Eden Hazard, is perhaps viewed as the best of the rest as his Chelsea side make the trip to the south coast to face Southampton.
The meeting between Liverpool and Manchester City on Sunday is likely to deter many Fantasy managers from entrusting the likes of Aguero and Mohamed Salah with the FPL captaincy, but it should be repeated that this fixture ended in 4-3 goal-fest in 2017/18.
In the below article, we’ll look at the current results of our captain poll as well as data from the last four Gameweeks concerning individual players, team attacking numbers and opposition defensive statistics to scrutinise the leading captaincy options for Gameweek 8.
The Captain Poll
Given that Spurs are about to come up against a side who have conceded the joint-highest number of Premier League goals this season (including a total of 14 in their last four matches), it is perhaps surprising that Harry Kane (£12.5m) isn’t dominating our Fantasy Football Scout captain poll by a bigger margin.
Kane has polled 48.4% of the Gameweek 8 vote at the time of writing, almost 15% fewer than Aguero managed ahead of Manchester City’s home match against Brighton and Hove Albion last weekend.
That figure could, of course, reflect Kane’s relatively modest ownership, with the England striker currently sitting in just 29.4% of FPL squads. Aguero, by contrast, features in more than one in two Fantasy teams.
No FPL forward has been involved in more goals than Kane in the last two Gameweeks, with his brace in the 2-0 win over Huddersfield Town his second double-digit haul of the season: both of which have come away from home, interestingly.
Eden Hazard (£11.1m) is clear of the chasing pack in second place, having garnered 23.5% of the vote.
Southampton have a nasty habit of conceding late goals and Hazard seems perfectly suited to capitalise on that particular weakness: five of the eight league goals the Belgian has been involved in this season have arrived in the last 20 minutes.
The Chelsea midfielder has delivered attacking returns in all but one of his seven league appearances in 2018/19, despite two of those coming off the bench.
There’s a scrabble for third place in our poll, with Sergio Aguero (£11.4m) a nose ahead of Kieran Trippier (£6.2m) and Mohamed Salah (£12.9m) – all featuring around the 3% mark.
Aguero and Salah, along with Sadio Mane (£9.9m) and Roberto Firmino (£9.4m), all delivered attacking returns in the seven-goal epic at Anfield last season, with the Egyptian emerging from the encounter with a double-digit haul.
Salah has also scored eight FPL points in every home fixture so far this season.
Aguero, meanwhile, is averaging only 3.3 points away from the Etihad in 2018/19. The Argentinean forward has, however, delivered attacking returns in each of his last four Premier League fixtures and scored again in the UEFA Champions League in midweek.
Trippier has three double-digit hauls to his name already this season (including one goal and three assists) and has created more chances than any other FPL defender bar Jose Holebas (£4.9m).
Jamie Vardy (£8.9m), Alexandre Lacazette (£9.5m) and Marko Arnautovic (£7.0m) all scored or assisted last weekend and the trio of forwards are hovering around the 2% mark in our captain poll.
Having garnered just over 100 votes at the time of writing, Anthony Knockaert (£5.5m) also surprisingly features in the top ten of our poll.
The Brighton winger has delivered attacking returns in every Brighton home match this season and the Seagulls welcome West Ham United to the Amex on Friday evening.
James Maddison (£6.9m) and Romelu Lukaku (£11.0m) complete the “G11” of captaincy candidates who are polling around 1% of the vote or higher.
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