The new Fantasy Premier League template among the top 10,000 managers appears to be suffering at the hands of the previous one, especially as Mohamed Salah delivered once again on Friday night.
Recent Gameweeks have seen a shuffling of the most selected players, many who have been steadily performing since the beginning of the season.
There had been notable shifts of top 10k ownership for big hitters such as Salah and Eden Hazard, as well as expensive defenders like Marcos Alonso and Andrew Robertson.
The new template largely preferred other emerging options like Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane, Harry Kane and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
However, with Salah and Hazard hitting form and Kane and Aubameyang struggling to live up to their value, it seems like the old template is fighting its way back.
Comparing the top 10k ownership statistics of last gameweek to the current one, we find the following statistics:
| Player | Gameweek 17 Top 10k Ownership | Gameweek 18 Top 10k Ownership |
|---|---|---|
| Salah | 58.77% | 48.14% |
| Hazard | 43.19% | 59.07% |
| Sterling | 50.66% | 55.04% |
| Kane | 61.41% | 57.95% |
| Aubameyang | 37.11% | 42.89% |
| Sane | 28.52% | 41.74% |
Numbers suggest that managers have been shipping Salah, Kane and Aubameyang and putting more faith into Manchester City assets and Hazard. As Salah punished his sellers again this week, it remains to see whether Kane and Aubameyang will follow his lead.
This back and forth shifting of assets leaves the most selected team this week looking like the following:
As the figure shows, Salah drops back to the fifth most owned midfielder despite recently scoring a hat-trick, and registering a goal and an assist against Wolves.
Hazard rises to second and Sterling settles at fourth. Meanwhile, Kane is still the most-owned forward with Aubameyang dropping to the fourth place.
The decline of managers’ faith in the new template of Kane and Aubameyang, plus the old pick of Salah, also manifests itself in the captaincy percentages this week.
Although the three of them are face relatively decent fixtures this week (Everton, Burnley and Wolves respectively), none of them is captained by more than 8% of the top 10k.
On the contrary, managers opted for Sterling (44.2%), Hazard (20.37%) and Sane (15.61%) for the armband.
These captaincy statistics ensure that, for the first time in many weeks, no player has an effective ownership of more than 100%, with Sterling the best at 99.34%.
This is good news for the game as this kind of splitting between managers is what allows for significant rank jumps, if you are correct with your captaincy choice.
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