It has been a quiet Gameweek in terms of chips used in the top 10k.
Actually, for the first time this season, the most-used is not the Wildcard.
Only 0.62% of them were activated in the top 10k as opposed to 1.15% active Triple Captains.
The vast majority of those were placed on Mohamed Salah (1.05%), with Sadio Mane basically being the only other triple captained player (0.09%).
This is understandable ahead of Liverpool’s Anfield meeting with Fulham’s poor defence on Sunday. The Cottagers have conceded 29 goals this season, more than any other side thus far.
This interest in Liverpool assets is very evident in captaincy polls as well. Salah is the top target with 59.58% while Mane is second with 26.93%.
That raises Salah’s effective ownership to 121.76% being the only player this week with more than 100% average weight in the top 10k.
The closest to him is Eden Hazard with 92.98% and Sergio Aguero with 87.82%.
However, this very high effective ownership of Salah doesn’t actually mean he is in all teams at this bracket.
The Egyptian is actually in just 61.1% of the top 10k squads. Most of them captained him, which is why his effective ownership is almost double his raw ownership.
In fact, Salah is ranked ninth when it comes to basic ownership in the top10k
Ahead of him is Hazard (86.11%), Aguero (85.4%), Marcos Alonso (83.4%), Aaron Wan-Bissaka (77.2%), Andrew Robertson (70%), Marko Arnautovic (69.6%), Richarlison (67.9%) and Callum Wilson (62.4%).
Meanwhile, Marko Arnautovic has emerged as a very popular option amongst the game’s current best managers. Supported by his good form and appealing upcoming fixtures, he is currently the second highest-owned forward in the top10k and was transferred in by 28.6% of these managers this week.
The main fall-guy for him is Aleksandar Mitrovic whose top10k ownership dropped from 37% to just 5.9% in a matter of days.
While Mitrovic’s usefulness was clearly at an end anyway, such a swathe of sales shows the influence of the market. His value was on the fall all week, and these managers may well have also sold him en masse to avoid falling foul of that.
We could possibly see this as a sign that the so-called ‘template team’ can quickly change when it needs to.
For example, if we look at the Wildcard template of this week, we see Arnautovic and Mat Ryan making their way into the active teams.
Meanwhile, the defence options seem to be a bit static at the moment. The usual suspects of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Alonso, Robertson and Benjamin Mendy still lead the way in most squads.
Despite strong upcoming fixtures, the top 10k are yet to really invest in Arsenal attack. Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have effective ownerships of 10.22% and 3.73% respectively, largely on account of such a cluster of value forwards.
On the other hand, while Manchester City the Manchester derby ahead of them, interest in their assets is still very high.
Four Man City players have effective ownerships of higher than 10%, namely Aguero (87.8%), Mendy (56.1%), Ederson (26.5%) and Raheem Sterling (14.1%).
Not surprisingly, if we look at the Premier League teams with the most players per top10k team, we find that Liverpool and Man City are tied in the first place as they both provide 2.1 players per FPL team at that level.
Arsenal are not even in the top 10 sides represented in Fantasy teams in the top 10k.
Chelsea are a close third with 2.0 average players. Wolves, West Ham and Bournemouth provide 1.3, 1.3 and 1.2 players respectively.
It remains to be seen whether Liverpool and Man City players will repay the faith of both their football and Fantasy managers this week.
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