Manchester City’s unexpectedly narrow 2-1 win over Southampton came at a cost for a large chunk of the top 10,000 managers in Fantasy Premier League.
Between them, Raheem Sterling (£12.1m) and Kevin De Bruyne (£10.2m) were handed the armband by almost 70% of the FPL bosses who were inside the top 10k at the point of the Gameweek 11 deadline.
The premium midfield pair duly blanked against the Saints, with Sterling picking up a booking to compound his owners’ misery.
Just under 6.5% of this elite group had more joy with a Sergio Aguero (£12.1m) captaincy, at least, while around one in four top 10k managers overlooked the City trio altogether.
The highest-owned player inside the top 10,000 is Jamie Vardy (£9.3m).
The Leicester City striker, who faces Crystal Palace on Sunday, featured in only 33.25% of top 10k squads ahead of the Gameweek 10 fixtures but his 20-point haul against Southampton has understandably increased his popularity.
Of course, a fair number of the new entrants inside the top 10,000 would have been helped there by owning Vardy in the first place.
The Foxes’ forward was by some distance the most-bought FPL asset of Gameweek 11, being transferred in by just over 675,000 managers.
De Bruyne remains in one in three top 10k squads, with Tammy Abraham (£7.8m) and John Lundstram (£4.7m) – both of whom delivered double-digit hauls on Saturday – also widely owned assets.
Mohamed Salah‘s (£12.4m) popularity continues to dwindle, with just over one in four top 10,000 managers hanging onto the Egyptian.
Indeed, Salah doesn’t feature in the top 10k Wildcard template, with Sadio Mane (£11.9m) proving a much more popular buy.
A two-man strike force of Vardy and Abraham is being widely favoured, with budget asset Aaron Connolly (£4.6m) the third-most-popular FPL forward among the elite managers who used their Wildcard this week.
There is predictably a lot of crossover between the template Wildcards inside the top 10k and outside of it, with Salah and Andrew Robertson (£6.9m) proving more popular in the chasing pack.
We have now hit the 50% mark for Wildcard usage in the top 10k.
One in four of the top 10,000 FPL managers have already used their Triple Captain chips, with the Free Hit and Bench Boost chips not as heavily relied on.
Just under 33% of the top 10,000 have yet to use a single chip but over 25% have used at least two already.
2.2% of the top 10k have maxed out on their allotted chips already, leaving only their second Wildcard to be used.
