Before Erling Haaland (£14.0m) bagged his brace and 16-point haul on Sunday, reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated. And now, the Norwegian is looking like the leading captaincy candidate ahead of Gameweek 11 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
However, City’s marksman faces stiff competition from a rejuvenated Mohamed Salah (£12.8m) and with favourable fixtures for Aston Villa, Brentford, and even (ahem) Manchester United, we examine a host of able alternatives and differential options.
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 Saturday’s 11:00 GMT deadline.
THE CAPTAIN POLL
Manchester City swept aside a shambolic Man United in a 3-0 demolition at Old Trafford with the most prolific elite-level striker in world football, unsurprisingly, taking centre stage.
Haaland opened the scoring from the penalty spot in the first half, before making it “game, set, match” shortly after the interval when powering a back-post header home.
This was vintage Haaland – individually registering two or more xG for the third time this season – and the Norwegian tops the Gameweek 11 captain poll as Bournemouth visit the Etihad Stadium. He is backed by just under two-thirds of the total votes cast by our users at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, Salah kept his hot streak alive with a stereotypically Salah goal, a late quick-break counterattack found Liverpool’s Egyptian wide-right who passed into an open net with Forest’s goalkeeper committed.
It’s now five goals in his last three matches for the player rumoured to have lost his cutting edge and 12 attacking returns on season-long numbers – just one behind a certain Erling Haaland (13).
A trip to Luton Town brings the Liverpool talisman firmly into the captaincy conversation with Salah backed by just over 20% of our users to continue his red-hot form.
Bruno Fernandes (£8.3m) occupies third place further back with under 3% of the vote (might that be people accidentally voting for him, being first on the list?), closely followed by Julian Alvarez (£7.2m) and Son Heung-min (£9.6m).