Unchanged line-ups for Man United and Southampton as FPL bosses eye Fernandes

Fantasy Premier League managers can take increased encouragement from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as he 2019/20 season winds to a close.

The Manchester United boss has named an unchanged side yet again, allowing the likes of Bruno Fernandes (£9.0m), Mason Greenwood (£4.9m), Anthony Martial (£8.3m) and Marcus Rashford (£9.0m) to retain their Fantasy appeal.

“We’ve had a decent amount of recovery days in between, which we won’t have the rest of the season now. We picked the short straw in that respect, but we picked the long straw at the start of this period. Didn’t feel we needed to change.” – Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

All eyes will be on the Portuguese international tonight, as he was chosen as the overwhelming favourite for the Gameweek 35+ captaincy by this season’s current top 10,000 Fantasy managers.

56.3% of them made the decision to hand Fernandes the armband this week, at least 41.4 percentage points more than any other option.

It was Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) who finished a distant second, backed by just 14.9% of managers at that level before his blank against Burnley.

At the very least, those who captained Fernandes will be feeling somewhat protected, as he goes into this Southampton match with an effective ownership in the top 10k of 151.7%.

Meanwhile, Danny Ings (£7.4m) remains a key player on the Fantasy scene, still sitting in 28.6% of squads worldwide.

His owners can probably feel more encouraged ahead of tonight’s trip to Old Trafford than they realise, considering Ings’ and Southampton’s away record this season.

The forward has netted in every single road trip since the Premier League’s restart while the Saints have the fifth-best away record this season (27 points from 17 such matches).

Manchester United XI: De Gea; Shaw, Maguire, Lindelöf, Wan-Bissaka; Matić, Pogba; Rashford, B Fernandes, Greenwood; Martial.

Southampton XI: McCarthy; Bertrand, Bednarek, J Stephens, Walker-Peters; Redmond, Romeu, Ward-Prowse, Armstrong; Ings, Adams.