Top 10k FPL managers and FFS poll voters disagree on Kane’s captain credentials

Harry Kane‘s (£10.8m) tightened his hold over the top 10,000 Fantasy Premier League managers in Gameweek 6.

The in-form Spurs man, currently the top-scoring Fantasy asset in any position, has proved to be the most popular captain at this level for the latest round of matches.

49.6% of managers inside the top 10k felt Kane was the best option for the armband, perhaps swayed by the fact that he has four goals in his last two Premier League trips to Burnley.

The most interesting part of Kane winning the captaincy debate at the top level of FPL this week is the fact that he was largely overlooked for the armband on a worldwide scale and in Fantasy Football Scout’s latest poll.

Just 20.8% captained Kane overall, while he only mustered the support of just 18.7% of the Fantasy Football Scout vote.

At this early stage of the season, it is still difficult to insist with cast-iron certainty that the top 10k always know better than everybody else but this is perhaps the first time in 2020/21 that we have a chance to really test their opinion against the masses.

The difference in opinion between the two groups of managers certainly makes Kane’s effective ownership in the top 10k rather ominous.

For the second week in a row, he has the highest figure in this department in the top 10k, with effective ownership of 139.9%.

Meanwhile, the people’s choice Mohamed Salah (£12.3m) is less of a force at this level than our polls previously indicated.

Despite winning the Scout captaincy poll and earning more armbands in the world than anyone else, the Egyptian has the second-highest effective ownership among the top 10k for Gameweek 6 (108.7%).

Even without the captaincy, Kane is now the most popular player among the top 10k anyway.

His standard ownership at this level increased by roughly 19 percentage points between the Gameweek 5 and 6 deadlines, rising from 70.4% to 89.2%.

That takes him past Salah, whose ownership among these managers has dropped from 80% to 72.7%.

That drop sees Son Heung-min (£9.4m) overtake him as the top 10k’s most fashionable midfielder, although the Egyptian is still ahead on effective ownership when we take captaincy into account.

This week’s saga surrounding the fitness of James Rodríguez (£8.0m) has, unsurprisingly, seen his stock drop at this level too. He remains the third-most-popular, but he has lost 10 percentage points of ownership among the top 10k.

Jack Grealish (£7.2m) and Wilfried Zaha (£7.2m) appear to have been among the chief replacements for Everton’s playmaker, as their selection rates increased by 7.8 and 9.6 percentage points respectively.

The sales of Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.5m) have had an impact at the top end of FPL as well as the rest of the world.

He was owned by 39.8% of the top 10k for Gameweek 5, more than any other defender. With the Gameweek 6 deadline now behind us, Alexander-Arnold sits in just 27.9% of teams at this level, Tyrick Mitchell (£4.2m) and James Justin (£4.8m) overtaking him as the most fashionable defenders.

Meanwhile, Emiliano Martínez (£4.8m) has finally crept into the top 10k template, now the second-most-popular goalkeeper with 31.7% backing at this level, although he failed to keep a clean sheet in Friday’s meeting with Leeds.

Chip usage was not particularly heavy in the top 10k for Gameweek 6.

The Wildcard was the most-used, although it was only deployed by 4.9% of managers at this level.

Meanwhile, while it can be easy to assume top 10k managers at this stage of the season have made a strong start following heavy chip usage, it is to their credit that 46.6% of them are still yet to use any at all.

36.9% have used one chip, almost certainly the Wildcard in most cases, which has been used by 38.2% of top 10k managers.