How might a Salah ‘perma-captaincy’ change our FPL strategy?

It’s been quite a week for me. My family tested positive for COVID and after a stressful few days, things are better and on the mend now. After that tough period, I was very much looking forward to the weekend’s action and was going in excited about my Kai Havertz (£8.1m) captaincy, only for him to blank in a 7-0 win against Norwich City. The pain was heightened because on my Gameweek 8 Wildcard, I had selected Romelu Lukaku (£11.5m) as well as Timo Werner (£8.6m) and had correctly targeted the Norwich fixture.

Saturday wasn’t so bad as I jumped from 212k to 70k on the back of hauls from Phil Foden (£8.1m), Reece James (£5.5m) and Tino Livramento (£4.4m). But the joy quickly vanished on Sunday as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer naively decided to dismantle the style of play that had worked so well for him against the big teams last season and instead decided to try to match the best attacking force in the country, which led to the 5-0 loss against Liverpool. Some might say that this was expected given Manchester United’s defensive form but this was the first time that Solksjaer decided to play on the front foot in a big game. Obviously, it was not a good decision and Paul Scholes rightly called this out in the post-match analysis against Atalanta.

The key here is to dive into the decision-making process of opting for a Kai Havertz against a man who has dominated the FPL landscape for the last few years and is in the form of his life. First, let us understand that the reason that some of us bet on Havertz as due to the subconscious impression that Solskjaer would continue to be pragmatic against the big teams like he did last season. But he wasn’t. I don’t want to cite what might happen on another day. There is a lesson to be learned here. Mohamed Salah (£12.9m) is in the prime of his career and the form of his life. He always has been Fantasy royalty. He always gets the shot volume and underlying stats in place. That said, they have completely sky-rocketed this year. These are his numbers this season compared to the range in his previous years:

• xGI/90 – 1.0
• Shots/90 – 4.4
• SiB/90 – 3.7
• Big Chances/90 – 1.4
• xG Delta/90 – +0.30

His numbers in the previous four seasons have the following range:

• xGI/90 – 0.7-0.8
• Shots/90 – 3.4-4.0
• SiB/90 – 2.6-3.2
• Big Chances/90 – 0.8-1.2
• xG Delta/90 – 0.0 generally with the exception of +0.20 in his record breaking 2017/18 season. 

Not only have his numbers significantly shot up (~25%) compared to his previous range, the fact that he is in the form of his life means that his finishing has also become a lot more efficient. One last comment on last Gameweek’s events is that simply put, there wasn’t enough reason to bet against Salah and if things remain the same, we are on course for his strongest campaign to date. 

Now if we’re looking at a season where someone like Salah will be a captain most weeks, I think this changes a few things. These are my loose initial ideas.

1. In terms of squad structure, we can now maybe looking at spreading the funds a little and have a slightly bigger squad. We maybe have six to seven transfers before the festive fixture crunch and the bench is going to be very useful during the Christmas period, where rotation is going to be very prominent. We might not necessarily ‘need’ another captaincy option to be called upon frequently, which allows this spread of funds. This is not to say we captain Salah every week. If you feel there is a Gameweek to roll the dice against him, go ahead and do it – but surely we all think thrice if not twice when it comes to betting against him. The spread of funds could mean a good eighth attacker and this is very manageable given the wide variety of midfielders as well as forwards we have in the £5.0m-£6.0m region. We can even afford to get a slightly more expensive fourth defender with Livramento being the playable emergency fourth/fifth defender in most of our squads. Some people are worried that this is difficult to undo but I don’t think that is the case as it only requires a double move and reallocation of funds. It could lead to playing the fixtures with your other assets in the Christmas crunch period.
2. One point that we discussed on this week’s episode of The FPL Wire is that with the advent of money coming into the league, a lot of top-flight squads are getting bigger and bigger. The pool of ‘nailed’ players is getting smaller and smaller and we now have to start thinking about ‘first-choice’ options and have a slightly higher threshold for risk when it comes to players who might be prone to rotation. I see this trend continuing in the coming years as well and this is where in December, having a wider squad could be useful given that ‘risky’ players will be even more prone to rotation in the upcoming period.
3. I normally think it is okay to take hits if at all you are doing it for captaincy. Now with there being a big safety net in Salah, you have to think even more before taking hits this season as we need to acknowledge that the script of this season might be different.
4. Price being the decision breaker in terms of close calls. For example, in our head, we are wired to think that a Harry Kane (£12.1m) is a more captainable asset compared to Son Heung–min (£10.2m), with penalties adding to this argument. Now if they perform similarly, we can go for a Son instead because we don’t need to think that hard about captaincy anymore and can pocket the price difference between the two and invest elsewhere. 

These are just my loose initial ideas in terms of ‘reading the room’ for the upcoming period and the season. Things change very fast in the FPL landscape and we constantly adapt. If you want to know more about this meta-discussion, we deep-dive into it on this week’s episode of The FPL Wire which you can find below. In my opinion, it is one of our better episodes.

Lastly, I would just like to dedicate this article to my cousin who is not in a good place health-wise and urge you to just reach out to your loved ones whenever you get the time because life is unpredictable.

See you next week!