Here’s our FPL Captain Planning article where we take a look at how the captain favourites could pan out over the first 6 gameweeks and see how that could effect our FPL team drafts. We also look at some alternative strategies for optimising the situation.
FPL Captain Planning GW1-6
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Introduction
Regular readers will know that generally I pick my captain for the gameweek based on the captain poll of who’s going to be the captain favourite that week
What I’m aiming to do here is establish the primary captain options and then see how this works out over the first 6 gameweeks by ranking their fixtures in order. I also establish the best other fixtures in the gameweek and see if that complicates matters
The 4 Primary captain options
The 4 primary captain options for me are:
Salah
Fernandes
De Bruyne and
Kane
Lets look at a stats comparison for last season
These 4 me are the 4 best captain options and you can make a case for any of them to be in your team. Personally I can only see how you can get 2 of these players in your FPL team and have some balance to it
Salah, Fernandes and Kane are the designated penalty takers for their team and De Bruyne ended the season as penalty taker although City are often in a state of flux over their settled penalty taker
It’s worth noting that De Bruyne ended the Euros with an injury and we’ve had no update that I’ve seen since the beginning of July. However City play Leicester in the Community Shield the week before the start of the season and we will see then if he is fit to start the season
It has been reported that Kane will miss the start of the season after the Euros and you may have seen my article talking about which other players could also miss the start of the season due to the Euros. There are also rumours about him joining Man City for £160m although that has been dismissed as nonsense.
A table reflecting the best fixtures for the 4 players for each gameweek
So if your FPL team has 2 designated captain options in Salah and Fernandes then the 2 gameweeks where potentially these 2 might not be captain favourites are GW2 and GW3.
With GW2 Salah isn’t too bad a comparison at home to Burnley. GW3 is a but trickier with Wolves at Man Utd not really comparable to Harry Kane, if at Spurs, home to Watford
After that it’s pretty good for the Fernandes and Salah captain option although the Kane at Spurs would have a good fixture against Palace in GW4.
I can’t really see there being captain favourite opposition within the clubs. Salah’s rival would be Mane, Fernandes Sancho, De Bruyne no one really and Kane at Spurs would be Son. Form in early fixtures could change things but I would be surprised
What about the other fixtures
In the graphic above, I’ve highlighted the best fixtures below the captain fixtures in green. These are generally fixtures against Brentford, Palace, Newcastle, Southampton and Norwich.
Arsenal, Everton, Villa, Brighton and Watford feature twice.
In terms of captain favouritism from those teams, I can’t really see Grealish or Calvert-Lewin or Aubameyang being a threat to the 4 captains I have mentioned above in those fixtures. As I said above early season form could change things but I would be surprised if it did that significantly.
Chelsea v Palace is a good fixture in GW1 but how will Chelsea lineup and can we really see Havertz or Werner threatening Salah to agree degree given their difficult fixtures afterwards meaning their ownership will probably be quite low.
What about premium captain hopping?
There are some protagonists for changing the captain each week to reflect the favourite or the perceived best choice. This theory I imagine will come more into focus this season given the pricing makes it difficult.
In doing the 10 top managers articles for a number of seasons I’ve never seen anyone doing it
If you start with the difficulty would be flipping to Kane if you start with Salah and Fernandes. You would need to save 2 transfers or a use a -4 points deduction to go from a midfielder to Kane.
Also price movements between the 4 would mean you would probably have to have £0.5m up your sleeve at least to switch around. It also assumes that you have no other injuries or gametime problems in the rest of your squad.
Here’s how it could work although it’s hard to avoid that GW3 -4 unless you take the pain of cITY V nORWICH
Salah and Fernandes start
GW2 – Flip Fernandes to De Bruyne
GW3 – De Bruyne to Kane -4
GW4 – Stay with Spurs v Watford. Flip De Bruyne to Fernandes
GW5 and GW6 stick with Salah in both fixtures and fix other problems in your squad
What about a 3 designated captain team?
I have personally found it hard to have a balanced team when I tried to have Kane, Salah and Fernandes in my team so have shied away from it. It would mean less hiding behind the sofa moments but I don’t think it would produce the results you want overall. It’s further complicated by Kane potentially being late back for GW1 at least.
I will be doing a team on the FFGeek Patreon site today though just to see how it looks like.
I hope you found that useful in your FPL team planning
Other posts
Attacking players fixture difficulty Schedule
Defensive players fixture difficulty schedule
Kev and Rob’s first draft teams
The FFGeek Tracker team (8k OR last season)
An overview of Promoted Norwich City
Players who could miss GW1 due to International tournaments
The FFGeek Pre-season watchlist
Andrew Whitfield’s latest draft team
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