While Sergio Aguero (£11.3m) can boast a Fantasy Premier League ownership of over 50% and the stock of Romelu Lukaku (£11.0m) begins to slowly climb, the popularity of three other premium forwards has been on a steady decline during this campaign.
Harry Kane (£12.5m), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£10.9m) and Roberto Firmino (£9.5m) all feature in the top five most-sold forwards of the season, each suffering a net transfer loss in every round of 2018/19 – with the exception of Kane in Gameweek 4.
With the international break traditionally – for some FPL managers at least – used to contemplate a Wildcard and premium defenders and midfielders such as Marcos Alonso (£6.8m), Benjamin Mendy (£6.4m), Eden Hazard (£10.7m) and Sadio Mane (£10.0m) in high demand, the sale of a costly forward is a quick way of freeing up cash to jump on the bandwagons elsewhere.
In Lucas Moura (£7.3m), Mane, Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) and – until recently – Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.2m), Kane, Firmino and Aubameyang also have viable midfield alternatives at their respective clubs who are outscoring them in FPL.
It should be said that Kane and Firmino are still owned by more than one in four Fantasy managers at this juncture. How many of the squads that they and Aubameyang sit in are “ghost teams”, of course, is another matter, given their pre-season popularity: not one of the top ten managers in our Live Hall of Fame owns any of the premium forward trio.
Is there any case for their inclusion in our squads going forward or portents that their form is about to take a turn for the better? In this latest Members piece, we analyse their key underlying attacking statistics and consider if any of them are being unfairly overlooked.
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5 years, 7 months agoZaha in training today is good enough for me. They'll be desperate to get him back in the team given their record without him and even more so with Benteke out. If he's only on the bench 20-30 minutes against a tiring Huddersfield isn't bad either.