FPL finished checking Gameweek 9 on Tuesday morning. Every figure below is what this site showed at the Gameweek 9 deadline, set against what happened.
Our team builder beat 86% of the top 10k
Our free tool, the Implied Fantasy team builder, picks the best £100m squad from the odds. At the Gameweek 9 deadline its squad was expected to score 59. It scored 72: 25 more than the average manager, 23 more than the eleven most-owned players with the same captain, and more than 86% of a 1,000-manager sample from the top 10k, with automatic substitutes counted for everyone. That sample averaged 61. That is three weeks in a row above four in five of the top 10k.
The squad did it without its captain. Jan Paul van Hecke, picked at £4.9m and 11% owned, scored a goal, kept a clean sheet and took three bonus points for 15, the top score in the game this week. Three Bournemouth players at 2.6% to 28% owned added 17 in the 2-0 win over Leeds: António Silva 8, James Hill 6 and Marcus Tavernier 3. Morgan Rogers and Nicolas Jackson scored 9 each and Cole Palmer 8. All eleven started, so the bench was not needed.
Captain
The market's captain was Erling Haaland: 53% to score at home to Brighton and 7.0 expected points, 14.0 with the armband. Brighton won 1-0 and he scored 2, 4 as captain. It was the pick nearly everyone made: 92% of our top-10k sample captained him, so the miss cost almost nobody ground. The next three on the captain ranking all did better: Cole Palmer scored 8, Nicolas Jackson 9 and Morgan Rogers 9, each worth 16 to 18 with the armband. A 53% chance to score is still the best in the game most weeks; this was the other 47%.
The market's eleven against the most-owned eleven
Take the eleven players with the highest expected points in a legal formation, with no budget and no captain: they scored 70, and this week they were the builder's eleven to a man. The eleven most-owned players in the same shape scored 47: João Pedro did not play, Haaland, Groß and Gvardiol scored 2 each and Cherki 1. Maxim De Cuyper, owned by 45%, and Rogers were the best of them on 9. The Gameweek 9 team of the week shows both elevens.
Clean sheets
Three of the six clubs the market rated most likely to keep a clean sheet did: Spurs, Bournemouth and Brentford, all 2-0 at home. Seven clubs kept one in all. Arsenal (27%) won 1-0 at Liverpool and Chelsea (26%) beat Manchester United 2-0, and two came from clubs rated under 25%: Everton, 1-0 at Newcastle, and Brighton at 12%, who won at Manchester City. The clean sheets page has this week's chances.
- Spurs37%✓ 2-0 v Crystal Palace
- Bournemouth34%✓ 2-0 v Leeds
- Sunderland30%✗ conceded 3 at Coventry
- Aston Villa29%✗ conceded 1 to Fulham
- Man City28%✗ conceded 1 to Brighton
- Brentford28%✓ 2-0 v Forest
- Arsenal27%✓ 1-0 at Liverpool
- Chelsea26%✓ 2-0 v Man Utd
- Everton21%✓ 1-0 at Newcastle
- Brighton12%✓ 1-0 at Man City
What the numbers missed
The surprises were cheap and barely owned. Oli McBurnie scored 12 for Hull from 4.0 expected points, at 1.8% owned, with a goal, an assist and three bonus points. Wesley Fofana scored 11 at 0.2% owned from 1.9: an assist, a clean sheet and eight defensive actions. Brighton's goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen scored 11 from 1.9 in the win at Manchester City, and Brentford's Sepp van den Berg 10 from 1.2. The defensive contributions page shows who is most likely to earn those two points this week.
Across the 310 players who appeared, our expected points were 1.9 points from the real score on average, better than the 2.1 of the two weeks before. Eight of the ten players with the highest expected points played the full game; Omar Marmoush came off after 76 minutes and Emiliano Buendía played 24. The track record keeps every gameweek's numbers.
Haaland leads again, away at Nottingham Forest, but Arsenal at home to Hull close the gap: Rice, Konsa and Havertz are all within two points of him as captain. This week's tips are up now and are updated on Friday after the press conferences. The deadline is Friday at 18:30, because Everton play Coventry that night.
Gameweek 10 tips and overview →