Mohamed Salah (£12.6m) was handed the armband by huge swathes of the top 10,000 Fantasy Premier League managers in Gameweek 15.
The Egyptian has accrued the largest captaincy backing in a single round at this level so far in 2020/21.
A whopping 82.8% of the top 10k chose Salah as their skipper ahead of an appealing home meeting with West Bromwich Albion.
The Baggies have conceded 29 goals in 14 league matches this season, an average of 2.1 per game, while Salah has blanked just once at Anfield in 2020/21.
As a result, it is no surprise to see so many high-level managers captaining him for Gameweek 15.
Kevin De Bruyne (£11.8m) was the second-most popular captain among the top 10k but still only managed the support of 5.2% for his home meeting with Newcastle.
That makes for a majority of 77.5 percentage points between Salah and De Bruyne.
And those who handed the armband to the Belgian had no joy on Saturday, with the City playmaker taking only appearance and clean sheet points away from the 2-0 win over Newcastle United.
Meanwhile, we can expect the top 10k to deploy a flurry of Wildcards in Gameweek 16 considering the chip usage for the latest round.
As you can see from the bar chart above, only 1.9% of these managers assembled a new squad for Gameweek 15 – a fact perhaps influenced in some part by the proximity to Christmas Day and a desire to leave Blank Gameweek 18/Double Gameweek 19 planning to the last possible moment.
That takes the total usage for the Wildcard to 81.6% among the top 10k with just one deadline left before the first one expires.
That means almost one in five of the top 10k have less than two days left to use the first Wildcard.
As is to be expected with some of the early frontrunners at this stage of the season, a fair chunk have already eaten into their chip allowance.
Almost one in three of this leading bunch have used two or more of their chips, with 2.9% now only having a second Wildcard in their locker.
But what of the 191 managers who played their first Wildcard ahead of the Gameweek 15 deadline?
As the graphic above illustrates, many of them have Double Gameweek 19 – and a possible Bench Boost – on their minds.
Ten of the 15-man template above have two fixtures in Gameweek 19, while Son Heung-min (£9.7m) and Harry Kane (£11.0m) have very favourable matches in the shorter term.
Almost two-thirds of the Wildcarders kept hold of Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£8.0m), interestingly, although what many may have deemed a favourable match-up against Sheffield United on Boxing Day may have been his last hurrah and the blank at Bramall Lane may hasten his departure from some of these teams.
De Bruyne and Chelsea defenders are the big losers in the above squad.
As for the most-owned players in the top 10k overall, there were two changes to the ‘template’ squad above from Gameweek 14.
Ben Chilwell (£6.1m) and Reece James (£5.1m), who were both flagged with injuries before blanking at the Emirates, have been replaced by Stuart Dallas (£4.7m) and Andrew Robertson (£7.3m).
Chilwell and James’ ownerships both dropped by more than half among the top 10k ahead of Gameweek 15.
