New template forming after extensive Wildcard usage

With the Christmas period looming large for Fantasy managers, there have been increases in Wildcard uses from week to week.

Gameweek 16 saw the continuation of the heavy Wildcard usage among the top 10 thousand FPL managers, especially.

4.54% of them activated the chip compared to 3.64% in Gameweek 15. This leaves around 12% first Wildcards left for managers to use in December.

There are clues to the new template when we look at how Gameweek 16 Wildcards compare with those from Gameweek 15. As you can see, the options selected are mostly similar across the two line-ups.

The two squads share 13 from a possible 15 players, which means Gameweek 15 Wildcarders benefited from many price changes which Gameweek 16 Wildcarders probably missed.

One of the two selection differences is Callum Wilson replacing the injured Marko Arnautovic in the front line, although ironically he also picked up an injury himself.

The second is the inclusion of Sead Kolasinac instead of Lucas Digne, with Arsenal’s fixtures looking better long-term compared to Everton’s.

The rest of the most selected Wildcard picks are the same except for slight changes in the ownership percentages of certain players.

For example, Wildcarders became more convinced of including Harry Kane (74.45% to 85.9%) and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (61.26% to 70.70%) in their new squads this week. Meanwhile the likes of Marcos Alonso (54.12% to 30.4%) and Leroy Sane (60.71% to 53.96%) suffered marginal drops in their Wildcard representation.

One major thing many Wildcarders missed was the inclusion of hat-trick hero Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian is now the highest-scoring player so far in Gameweek 16 with 21 points, and he’s only included in just 32.2% of Wildcards this week.

He is also not that highly owned in general among the top 10k teams, with only 39.5% ownership, raised to 52.1% effective ownership by factoring the captaincy in.

This meant his owners earned big rank jumps, especially with the latest captain poll winner Aubameyang (40.31%) scoring only five points.

Meanwhile, the popular Wilson and Trent Alexander-Arnold missed out on Saturday lunch-time which again raises the importance of having a good bench in December.

Running simulations of the exact autosubs that will take place for just the two of them in the top 10k indicates the following results. It is Aaron Wan-Bissaka who will gain the most increase of effective ownership, followed by Alonso and Ryan Fraser, as indicated in the following table.

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