Son Heung-min‘s (£9.2m) second haul of 2020/21 inevitably led to a huge surge in demand, with just under two million more Fantasy Premier League managers recruiting the Korean midfielder ahead of Gameweek 5.
Son is indeed the most-owned player in both the top 10k and overall template Wildcard squads, featuring in over 80% of these teams in both instances.
CHECK YOUR LIVE FPL RANK HERE
The squads above are closely matched as one would expect, with only two differences: Callum Wilson (£6.5m) and James Justin (£4.7m) feature in the top 10k Wildcard template team, with Patrick Bamford (£5.8m) and Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.5m) taking their places in the overall set-up.
The top 10k Wildcarders have eschewed premium defenders above £6.0m, with both sets of managers also going with cheap options between the posts.
Over one in three FPL managers have now used their first Wildcards, with that figure down at around 25% for those inside the top 10k at the point of the Gameweek 5 deadline.
Around 60% of managers have yet to use a single chip in 2020/21, both within the top 10k and outside of it.
Over 10% of FPL bosses have used two or more of their chips, with the Triple Captain the next most-popular option after the Wildcard.
Back to Gameweek 5 and there’s a real split in terms of captaincy choices, particularly when we look at the overall picture.
Not one asset was backed with the armband by more than 18% of FPL managers, with Son narrowly the most-popular pick.
Within the top 10,000, the situation is markedly different.
Harry Kane (£10.6m) was handed the captaincy by almost one in two of these high-flying managers ahead of Spurs’ match against West Ham United.
Indeed, only Mohamed Salah (£12.3m) features in more of the top 10,000 teams than Kane – the in-form striker’s ownership is at 70.43% within the leading pack but down at 28.85% overall.
Wilfried Zaha (£7.2m) is an interesting inclusion in the midfield of around one in five squads in the top 10k.
One in four managers overall will be forced into a transfer if Virgil van Dijk (£6.5m) is, as rumoured, ruled out for a long period of time.
A similar number still own Kevin De Bruyne (£11.6m) despite the Belgian being red-flagged. Even at this early stage of the campaign, “ghost teams” will be starting to skew those overall figures.
Statistics taken from LiveFPL.net
4 years, 24 days agoRisers: Kane (10.7) Son (9.3) Calvert-Lewin (7.7) Saïss (5.2) Justin (4.8) Mitchell (4.2)
Fallers: De Bruyne (11.5) Alli (7.5) Bergwijn (7.1) Alisson (5.9) Nketiah (5.7) McBurnie (5.7) Fred (5.3) James (5.0) Emerson (4.8) Jones (4.4) Lascelles (4.4) Marí (4.4) Odoi (4.4) Lansbury (4.4) Lowe (4.4) Kenny (4.3) Le Marchand (4.3)