Liverpool and Manchester City’s Sunday afternoon clash has complicated the Gameweek 12 captaincy debate.
Fantasy Premier League managers are largely steering clear of their table-topping premium options this weekend, with a greater focus on the cheaper assets in their teams.
Leicester, Chelsea and Wolves appear to be three sides at the heart of the discussion according to the polls.
As ever, we’re here to assess each candidate on both their own merits over the last four Gameweeks as well as their opponents’ defensive form.
As this article uses extensive data from the Fantasy Football Scout Members Area, only those who have signed up for the 2019/20 season can access it in full.
Captain Poll
It’s been tough keeping this to ourselves and making no comment at all, especially when some of the results have been leaked. Now we know for certain which player has won the captain poll.
We have saved and screenshotted the results which clearly show just one player has emerged as the winner.
It’s ………Jamie Vardy (£9.4m).
The Leicester City forward has been in exceptional form this season and currently sits top of the Golden Boot race with 10 goals.
Seven of those have come since Gameweek 7, where his form has really raced into life from a Fantasy perspective.
Since that 5-0 win over Newcastle, Vardy has averaged 9.6 points per game.
In Gameweek 12 he goes up against an Arsenal defence that has conceded an average of 1.4 goals per away game this season.
Furthermore, Vardy has scored eight times in as many Premier League starts against the Gunners.
All of that has contributed to 39.7% of voters in our poll selecting him as the best captain option for Gameweek 12.
Tammy Abraham (£7.9m) has his hands on second place with 23.4% of the vote.
This weekend, Chelsea host Crystal Palace in a match that could finally see their number one centre-forward even out the balance between his home and away form.
In the last four Gameweeks, Abraham has four attacking returns although all of those have come on the road.
Will some Fantasy managers be put off by the fact that just two of his 11 attacking returns in 2019/20 have come at Stamford Bridge? Perhaps. We recently did an analysis of this subject in a Members article.
A long way off in third-place in the captain poll was Raúl Jiménez (£7.2m) who pulled in the support of 5.9% before hosting Aston Villa.
This Midlands rivalry contest could see plenty of goals, especially considering that Dean Smith’s men have conceded an average of 2.2 goals per away match this season.
Meanwhile, Jiménez is enjoying something of a Fantasy renaissance of late with four attacking returns (two goals, two assists), since Gameweek 8.
Despite going six league matches in a row without a goal, Teemu Pukki (£6.8m) is currently fourth in our captain poll with 3.3% of the vote.
That support is probably almost entirely influenced by the fact that Watford have conceded 23 goals this season – the third-worst.
However, it must be highlighted that Quique Sanchez Flores has been slowly improving the Hornets’ back-line recently.
In the last four matches, they have kept two clean sheets and went close to a third against Spurs.
Sadio Mané (£12.0m) is the most popular asset from Liverpool and Manchester City’s encounter as far as captaincy is concerned.
2.9% of our voters have backed him for the armband and, on closer inspection, it hardly seems a strange decision to do so.
You have to go back to Gameweek 3 for the last time that Mané failed to register attacking returns in a home game.
Since then he scored 15 points against Newcastle, notched up a 12-point haul when Leicester came to Anfield and earned a penalty against Spurs in Gameweek 10 for five points.
Meanwhile, Manchester City’s defence has raised some eyebrows of late and they could also be without goalkeeper Ederson (£6.1m) on Sunday afternoon after he picked up an injury midweek.
There isn’t much backing for other cast members for this potentially title-deciding clash. 1.7% have voted for Sergio Aguero (£12.0m), 1.3% for Raheem Sterling (£12.1m), 1.1% for Mohamed Salah (£12.3m) and 0.9% for Kevin de Bruyne (£10.2m).
Harry Kane (£10.8m), Anthony Martial (£7.6m), Christian Pulisic (£7.3m), Todd Cantwell (£4.7m), John Lundstram (£4.8m), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.0m) and Marcus Rashford (£8.5m) are the other options on more than 1% support.
