Trends From the Top- What are League Leaders Doing? A review of GW 9 ahead of GW 10.

Sigurdsson was selected by 100% of the top 10 fantasy football managers for gameweek 9.

Trends From The Top- What Are The Leaders Doing?

Welcome to this week’s edition of Trends From the Top.  This week, the trends are rather interesting as they rapidly evolved to include new players not previously selected in the top lineup of prior weeks.  Tadic and Sanchez were two such examples who literally rose to the top without warning (at least when you track the stats of the highest performing fantasy managers).  Will they remain top choices for top managers or were they just flukes which allowed new managers to rise with their performances?  Let’s take a look…

Who was the most captained player by the top ten for Gameweek 9?

This week, few leaders reaped the benefits of picking the “correct” captain as 80% of the leaders had Aguero as their captain choice.  The remaining managers had Sanchez and Pelle which were clearly better picks than Aguero for this particular gameweek.

Who were the most popular players chosen by the top ten for Gameweek 9?

Goalkeepers:  For GW 9, Krul, Mannone and Foster were the top choices as each had 20% ownership.  Heaton, Guzan, DeGea and Lloris each came up with 10%.

Defenders:  When we look at defenders for Gameweek 9, we see 3 popular picks.  Baines who was represented last week with a 50% ownership picked up another manager this week thus being the most popular at 60% ownership.  Taylor and Clyne was also popular options with 50% followed by Chambers and Bertrand at 40% and Wisdom at 30%.  11 players made the list and Ivanovic, Vlaar, Jagielka, Coleman and Coloccini rounded off the group with 10% ownership a piece.

Midfielders:  When you look at midfielders, the top 10 managers had 11 different picks.  Sigurdsson was the most popular pick with 100% ownership followed by Sterling with 90%, Tadic with 60%, DiMaria and Sanchez with 40%, Eriksen and Fabregas with 30%, Boyd with 20% and Gerrard, Silva and Davis each with 10%.

Forwards: This week only 6 forwards made the list which is indeed a very low number.  Aguero and Pelle selected by 80% followed by Welbeck with 40%, Berahino at 20% and Bony and Lukaku with 10%.

In summation, the Must-Haves for top managers for Gameweek 15 were Baines, Taylor, Clyne, Tadic, Sigurdsson, Sterling, Aguero and Pelle as they all had an ownership rate of 50% or higher.

Other interesting facts:

• The average score for Gameweek 9 among the top 10 was 50.5 points which is only 12.5 points above average for the week. With 80% of the managers selecting Aguero as their captain, many fell short this past weekend and our current leader only brought in 38 points.
• Serbia is represented as being in the top position followed by Hong Kong, Portugal, Finland and India.  England represents only 30% this week and Namibia and France round off the top 10.

This was certainly a week for picking a differential as your captain and yet, the top leaders chose to stay with the popular pick, Aguero.

Will knowing any of this information, impact or influence and fantasy football trades?  Let us know in the comment section below and as always, best of luck in Gameweek 10!

@bekachan