How the top 10k FPL managers set their teams up for Double Gameweek 26

The top 10,000 Fantasy Premier League managers deployed chips in their droves for Double Gameweek 26.

For all the community’s discussion of Bench Boosts ahead of this bumper round of fixtures, the Triple Captain proved the most popular at this level.

As of Thursday afternoon, the Bench Boost was winning our latest Double Gameweek 26 chips poll, but only 17% of the top 10k deployed it for Saturday’s deadline.

As you can see, the Triple Captain chip receive significant attention for Double Gameweek 26 at this level, 47.1% of them going for an enhanced armband.

All eyes will be on Harry Kane (£11.1m) on Sunday afternoon as the Spurs man is the player most trusted with the Triple Captain chip.

33.9% of the top 10k have played it on him for Double Gameweek 26, 4.5% selecting Bruno Fernandes (£11.6m), 3.1% Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£7.8m) and 2.7% Mohamed Salah (£12.6m).

Meanwhile, it is fascinating to see that 26.8% of the top 10k have taken on the biggest-ever Double Gameweek without a chip.

With 8.3% of them deploying their second Wildcard this weekend, just over half of the top 10k still have that chip waiting for use at a later point.

28.5% have their Triple Captain outstanding while 24.0% are holding onto their Bench Boost for now.

As far as the armband allocation is concerned, Kane is also the winner.

58% of the top 10k have selected him either as captain or Triple Captain ahead of meetings with Burnley and Fulham.

Those fixtures also enticed 6.0% of them to back Son Heung-min (£9.5m), although that was only enough for fifth-place in this week’s skipper contest.

Captained by 14.3%, Fernandes is the Double Gameweek 26 runner-up ahead of facing Chelsea and Crystal Palace.

Everton’s appealing fixtures against Southampton and West Bromwich Albion swayed 8.7% of the top 10k into captaining Calvert-Lewin while Salah has picked up armbands from 7.5% of them. Liverpool face Sheffield United and Chelsea between now and Gameweek 27.

Kane is this week’s most powerful player inside the top 10k with effective ownership of 158.6%.

As ever, Fernandes is also above 100% thanks to his loyal ownership and collection of captainers.

Double Gameweek 25 template

Double Gameweek 26 template

There was very little fluctuating in the template between the two most recent Gameweeks as far as defenders were concerned.

Emiliano Martínez (£5.3m) and Nick Pope (£5.6m) remain the most popular goalkeepers.

Stuart Dallas (£5.0m), João Cancelo (£6.1m), John Stones (£5.2m) and Rúben Dias (£6.1m) are also the most-fashionable defenders still, in that order.

The only change we see in this position is what looks like a switch from Vladimir Coufal (£4.7m) to Matt Targett (£4.9m), a swapping of a single Gameweek player for an Aston Villa left-back with two fixtures.

There were some interesting changes in midfield.

As you can see, Fernandes’ ownership at this level dropped from 99.0% to 96.8%, with Salah’s backing also losing 2.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Ilkay Gundogan (£6.2m) saw his ownership rise from 85.2% to 91.0%, while Son and Raphinha‘s (£5.4m) backing largely plateaued.

Unsurprisingly, it was all-change in the forward positions. Patrick Bamford (£6.9m) suffered a flash-sale ahead of his bank against Aston Villa.

His top-10k ownership dropped from 97.9% to 77.8% between Double Gameweeks 25 and 26.

Kane leap-frogged both Danny Ings (£8.4m) and Michail Antonio (£6.5m) to become the top 10k’s second-favourite forward (66.8%).

Calvert-Lewin has also made a swift return to the temple, just behind Kane with his 66.4% backing.

With the end of the 2020/21 campaign in our sights, keeping an eye on the template among top-10k Wildcards is increasingly important.

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