🧵 FPL Top All-Time Managers Team 💥 403x Top 10K finishes
##GOALKEEPERS
The most owned keeper is Kinsky with 74% ownership. 21% owned overall so there's a 50% gap in the overall player base vs top managers, and a big gap with the second top keeper as well - it's Verbruggen with 61% ownership. He's 19% owned overall. Raya is the most expensive keeper this year, the only one at 6m, he's third top with 15%, then Lammens 14%.
If you're not bench boosting early on then Kinsky and Dubravka is a nice pairing because that's the least amount of money you can spend to have a guaranteed keeper every week. In the unlikely scenario Kinsky gets injured Dubravka will play. Spurs 1st in the league for xGC from De Zerbi's arrival onwards last season, albeit smaller sample size.
This is also doable with Brighton, Steele is 4m. There's only a couple other teams with a 4.5m and 4m pairing like Bournemouth and Fulham.
##DEFENDERS
Defenders next and #1 is Calafiori, I wonder how much this increased by after the Community Shield scoring vs Man City? He's 78% owned, exactly 50% more than the overall playerbase. Maguire second with 57%, White 32%, Mosquera 29%, then Shaw, Muharemovic, Rodon, Thomas, Ajer, O'Shea, Gabriel, Davis, Diop, Van Ewijk and Hume.
Arsenal have now reached an agreement to sign Konsa - will become an Arsenal player subject to the medical. He can play and CB but this is primarily a CB signing which casts some doubt over Mosquera. Only 4.5m so he's going to be a potential game breaker too good to ignore for 4.5m later. Expecting Mosquera ownership to slide.
So despite the huge price increase 17% still happy to opt for Gabriel, and if he maintains last season's points per game he'll actually be a bargain for 8m, he missed 8 games and only scored 30 fewer points than Haaland who is 7.5m more.
The Arsenal defence situation still murky as the deadline nears, you've got Hincapie as competition for left back, you've got Arsenal reportedly looking to sign a CB because Saliba's out for months, which casts a question mark over Mosquera longer term, you've got Timber back in a few weeks which will affect White. It's close but their favourite second Arsenal defender is White albeit by a margin of 3%.
Their favourite 4m defender is Thomas with 22% ownership, then O'Shea, then Davis Diop and Van Ewijk all 17% owned. We're blessed with 4m defender this year, it was that long ago a few years back you'd be lucky to have any 4m defenders in the game that would play.
##MIDFIELDERS
Midfielders next, and look at that. Bruno with 94% is the joint most owned player among the top all-time managers, can you guess the other name? Bruno is 49% owned overall
Mbeumo is second top with 70% owned, compared to 32% overall. These are the places you can make big gains from these videos, if there's a big discrepancy between experts ownership and overall that's a buy signal. We'll have a full list later that will have both columns for comparison.
Szobo 58% owned, Gross 52%, Tzolis in fifth higher than I expected actually, but he has been fantastic in pre-season and the Community Shield. Martinelli didn't even make the squad which is telling. Perhaps Arsenal want to sell him and Eze is the LW competition, perhaps they bring in another LW.
Ndiaye 42%, Wirtz 25%, then Sangare, that's Brentford's Sangare. Le Fee, Gomez, Semenyo, Slater, Palmer, Anderson and Schade. Gross got the 90 mins in Brighton's Europa Conference League qualifier, Gomez came off early. Can't draw too many conclusions but not the best game for Gomez and probably comes off early again vs Villa on the weekend.
##FORWARDS
Lastly the forwards. If you guessed Haaland was the one joint most owned with Bruno you were wrong! It's Joao Pedro at 94%. In fact Haaland isn't even second, Calvert-Lewin 82%, then it's Haaland with 76%. Huge gap from the top 3 to the rest which makes sense, it's been the template front 3. Isak 18%, Thiago 10%, Brobbey 8%.
Not that those names following aren't valid picks at all, they absolutely are and that could be a big edge early on. Brobbey faces newly promoted Ipswich, now under O'Neil in charge. He looks especially appealing if you're targeting an early wildcard GW3/GW4, same goes for Le Fee of course. Thiago was fantastic last year and has the fixtures to potentially carry that on, and if Isak can return to his best he'll be borderline must have.
Consensus team next below...
##THE TEAM
So that brings us to the consensus team next. To explain - this is based on the 15 most owned players within budget. The top all-time manager template.
So here we go. It's a 3-5-2 with Verbruggen in goal, in defence Calafiori, Maguire, and Ajer.
In midfield Bruno, Mbeumo Ndiaye, Szobo and Gross. Up front Haaland and Joao Pedro. The bench boost active, it's Kinsky, Calvert-Lewin, Thomas and Rodon.
Now given this is a GW1 bench boost you would probably want to opt for a 4m Sunderland defender rather than Thomas for better clean sheet odds, they probably both concede but Thomas is the #1 4m defender so he's in. We didn't talk about Ajer, Van den Berg is sidelined for a couple of months, he did really well for defcons per start so he's nice for 4.5m, when you've got his CB partner Collins 5.5m as well for comparison. How many players have you got from the team?
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