Here’s our fantasy premier league GW2 captain choice article where we look at ways of assessing the best captain pick for the gameweek. We look at the fixtures, the bookies odds, the FPL advice site polls, who the FFGeek contributors are captaining, some stats and the FFGeek choice.
fantasy premier league GW2 captain choice
The fixtures
The Bookies Team win odds
Only 3 teams are heavy favourites this week:
Crystal Palace v Liverpool £1.44 – Salah, Mane, Firmino
Man City v Huddersfield £1.06 – Aguero, Mahrez, Bernardo, Mendy
Spurs v Fulham – £1.28 – Kane, Alli, Eriksen
The Bookies player odds
Here’s a bookies anytime goal scoring odds up to £2.20 for £1 invested:
£1.44 – Aguero and Kane
£1.61 – Jesus
£1.70 – Salah
£1.80 – Sterling,
£1.95 – Mahrez
£2.05 – Vardy
£2.10 – Tosun, Morata
£2.20 – Arnautovic
The FPL advice site Polls
Here’s the FFGeek captain poll:
The FFGeek poll asks who will you captain as does site 2. Site 1 asks for the best captain and site 3 is silent on the question.
| Site 1% | FFGeek% | Site 2% | site 3% | |
| Aguero | 44 | 58 | 61 | 49 |
| Salah | 25 | 29 | 26 | 24 |
| Mendy | 5 | 4 | n/a | 2 |
| Kane | 4 | 2 | 7 | 5 |
The FFGeek contributors
Here’s the FFGeek contributors captain picks
| Contributor | Captain |
| Joseph Crilley | Aguero |
| Rob Reid | Aguero |
| Alex Ball | Salah |
| Keith Spencer | Salah |
| Scott Hargadon | Aguero |
| FPL Word | Aguero |
| Mikael D | Salah |
| Jordan Sadler | Mendy |
| Costas Chari | Aguero |
| Sergio Torija | Aguero |
| Yaniv Salomon | Aguero |
| Mikael H | Salah |
| Stephen Troop | Aguero |
| Andrew Ferguson | Aguero |
| Robert Cosgrove | Aguero |
| Prakhar Patel | Salah |
Looking at the stats
With the 2 favourites being Salah and Aguero lets look at some stats
Salah Stats
Here’s Salah away at non top 6 sides in 17/18
The 2 games Salah was not in the squad btw were away at Burnley and away at Everton
Crystal Palace home vs top 6 sides in 17/18
| GWK | Opponent | score |
| 8 | Chelsea | 2-1 |
| 20 | Arsenal | 2-3 |
| 21 | Man City | 0-0 |
| 28 | Spurs | 0-1 |
| 29 | Man Utd | 2-3 |
| 32 | Liverpool | 1-2 |
Salah scored last season in Liverpool’s 2-1 win at Palace
Aguero Stats
Aguero at home against non top 6 sides
Aguero stayed on the bench for 4 games last season. 1 was at home and 3 were away
Huddersfield defence away against top 6 sides in 17/18
| GWK | Opponent | score |
| 10 | Liverpool | 0-3 |
| 14 | Arsenal | 0-5 |
| 26 | Man Utd | 0-2 |
| 29 | Spurs | 0-2 |
| 37 | Man City | 0-0 |
| 35 | Chelsea | 1-1 |
Gametime
There’s no doubt in my mind that Salah will start. The only question would be an early subbing if they were comfortably ahead. Given that situation it’s unlikely he wouldn’t have returned well.
Aguero is not straightforward as he has a fairly evenly balanced like for like replacement in Jesus so he can be dropped at anytime. You’d think at this early stage and with the 0-0 last season and the De Bruyne injury that he would start. There is a guardian newspaper article which says Pep is thinking of dropping him. That article has been retweeted by a well known football journalist in Manchester. Does it mean anything? Who knows but it doesn’t help. Btw that article was out after all the contributors gave their captain pick.
From last season he didn’t get off the bench in 4 games. 3 of those were away. What’s more is that his minutes at home when he started were very good
Summary
Aguero is £1.44 ATGS with the bookies. Salah is £1.70
Aguero is a clear leader in the polls to Salah by about 50% to 25%
The FFGeek contributors favour Salah by 10 to 5.
The 17/18 stats clearly favour Aguero on goals and minutes played surprisingly.
As for the defences Palace could concede goals and despite the 0-0 v Man City teams could score against them. Amazingly Huddersfield also drew 0-0 with City. Defensively they started abysmally but improved remarkably towards the end of the season.
The FFGeek choice
It’s closer than I thought but to me Aguero has the edge on his ability to score big. Both however are consistent. The Palace defence in 17/18 was a bit of a hit and miss affair and could definitely concede goals. The Huddersfield defence improved towards the end of the season but it’s hard to have confidence in it and I believe Zanka is now injured.
The real question is that of Aguero’s starting position. I think Aguero has the edge although less than I thought before I crunched the numbers but for the moment I’m sticking with him as my choice
The shield and sword captain analogy is difficult here. Salah has massive ownership but the serious FPL managers are probably going more for Aguero unless tonights news spooked many. So no clear captain to play safe with. If you don’t captain Salah and he is successful then your rank will suffer full stop. Whether it will ultimately be suffering against Managers who will be low on the rankings at the end of the day is questionable.
That’s it hope you found it useful.
If you want to see any some teams and their captain choices then here’s:
FFGeek contributors part 1 teams or FFGeek contributors part 2 or even part 3
plus top 1k finisher Andrew Ferguson
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