It’s straight back to the grind with a full set of midweek fixtures and a strong panel of captaincy candidates for Gameweek 33’s Fantasy Premier League (FPL) armband.
Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (£12.3m) assumes the role of the chief protagonist but faces stiff competition with Liverpool, Brighton and Hove Albion and Aston Villa assets providing the main competition.
As usual, the Captain Sensible article is here to highlight which assets have the best chance of hauling.
First, we will assess the fallout of the captain poll, before then analysing the best options, Rate My Team (RMT) and the Premier Fantasy Tools ratings ahead of Tuesday’s 18:00 BST deadline.
THE CAPTAIN POLL
Manchester City’s Haaland tops a highly competitive captain poll, backed by just over half of the total votes cast by users at the time of writing.
Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) provides the main competition, sitting currently in second place, backed by just under one in seven of our users.
Ollie Watkins (£7.7m) occupies third place with 13.7% of the vote, followed closely by Kaoru Mitoma (£5.6m) with Diogo Jota (£8.8m) further back.
THE CANDIDATES
ERLING HAALAND
It’s futile to compare Haaland to mere mortals as the Norwegian’s debut Premier League season draws to a close, with a full array of collective and personal honours looking increasingly likely.
Haaland’s 32 goals is just two shy of the single-season record held by Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole and with eight Premier League games remaining it’s not a question of if but when.
It’s taken just 27 appearances to notch 32 goals – the fastest in the competition – and the bets are off that four-hattrick Haaland can equal, or better Alan Shearer’s current single-season record of five Premier League trebles.
Unequivocally, the Norwegian has broken this edition of FPL with the hard numbers backing this up.
Haaland has notched 27 big chances from the 47 received, converting a staggering 33% of shots to goals, and generating 22.84 expected goals (xG) – all obviously division-leading numbers this season.
But how’s his big-game numbers? Well, Lateriser tackled the topic of team-level “big-match” xG this week – but for Haaland individually, I see a drop-off in his numbers against elite sides.
| Haaland v ‘big six’ opponents | Haaland v the rest | |
| Time played | 89.9 | 76.0 |
| Expected goals (xG) | 0.5 | 0.9 |
| Goals | 0.7 | 1.3 |
| Big chances | 1.3 | 1.8 |
| Shots | 3.3 | 3.5 |
| Aerial duels | 4.3 | 2.2 |
| Recoveries | 2.0 | 0.7 |
Above: Comparison of Haaland’s numbers (average per match) against the traditional ‘big six’ versus the rest.
The Norwegian plays more minutes against top teams, with xG, goals and big chances all noticeably down. The data suggests that Haaland leads the line and defends from the front with aerial duels and recoveries both increasingly significant.
Manchester City host Arsenal on Wednesday evening with the Premier League title firmly in the balance – but momentum is with the Citizens.
Three consecutive draws for Arteta’s side have blundered their title challenge from a winning position, with harsh but ultimately fair questions arising about their bottle – or lack thereof.
The Gunners are without a clean sheet for five successive matches, badly missing the presence and quality of William Saliba (£5.0m) in central defence who won’t be ready for the Etihad showdown.
Arenal’s 59 shots in the box conceded, 27 shots on target against, and 15 big chances shipped are all mid-table numbers over the last six matches.
MOHAMED SALAH
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