We explore the best options for the Fantasy Premier League captain for Gameweek 6 and reveal the results of our captain poll and our captain metric – who will you choose this Gameweek?

BEFORE WE BEGIN: If you haven’t already seen, we released an article last year introducing the new ‘Captain Metric’, which explains the concept fully and it can be viewed here > https://fplconnect.blog/2018/08/07/the-captain-metric-explained-2/

Success or failure in GW5 pretty much hinged on whether you owned 1 of Hazard or Fraser.

If you owned neither, then you were likely staring a red arrow in the face, as the pair smashed in mega hauls of 18 (Fraser) and 20 (Hazard) for their owners.

In terms of the captaincy, the majority went with Agüero and can feel fairly happy with his 2 assists and 7pt return considering he had to be taken off before the 60 minute mark with a knock.

16% continued to show faith in Salah with the armband away at Spurs and on another day might have seen some decent returns, but unfortunately, Salah was unable to make his chances count and went on to blank.

The scoreline flattered Spurs – Liverpool could have scored 4/5 if Mané and Salah were on their game. Both made poor decisions in the final 3rd and were unable to finish the decent chances that came their way. Those without Salah can consider themselves fairly fortunate.

9% captained a man in the same fixture. Harry Kane was more or less invisible in that match and despite bagging a 16 point return in this fixture last year, went on to blank also.

The winners this week were the 9% that backed Eden Hazard. He was on fire again and rewarded his owners with a monster haul that came in the form of a hat-trick in a 4-1 win versus Cardiff.

The captaincy for GW6, a while back, might have looked like a fairly easy decision with Salah at home to Southampton, but with him simply not taking the chances as he was last year and Hazard and Agüero consistently providing the goods, it might not be so easy this week.

Let’s delve into the stats and see if we can shed some light on the scenario!

Results of our poll (in progress)

Mohamed Salah – 51% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats the last 5 Gameweeks:

40 penalty area touches

23 total goal attempts.

16 goal attempts inside the box.

6 big chances.

2 goals.

2 assists.

Eden Hazard – 24% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats the last 5 Gameweeks:

29 penalty area touches

14 total goal attempts.

8 goal attempts inside the box.

3 big chances.

5 goals.

2 assists.

Sergio Agüero – 13% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats the last 5 Gameweeks:

38 penalty area touches

25 total goal attempts.

15 goal attempts inside the box.

3 big chances.

3 goals.

4 assists.

Sadio Mané – 12% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats the last 5 Gameweeks:

28 penalty area touches

15 total goal attempts.

14 goal attempts inside the box.

2 big chances.

4 goals.

0 assists.

Differential captain options

Alexandre Lacazette – After 3 cameo appearances in the first 3 games, Lacazette seems to have earned a place in Emery’s starting line-up as their sole striker. He has now played a full 90 minutes in the last 2 Gameweeks and in that time, has had more penalty area touches (18) and more goal attempts inside the box (7) than any other forward, along with a goal and 2 assists. With him and Arsenal in good form, and a leaky Everton defence up next, incidentally a team they’ve score more goals against than any other team (16 in their last 5 meetings), Lacazette looks set to continue his good form and looks a great bet for a differential captaincy punt if you have the cojones to go against the big boys. Jamie Vardy – Leicester took a bit of a battering against Bournemouth but still managed to get a couple of goals. Their next fixture looks to be an enticing one and a game they will be looking to ensure they get 3 points from. Leicester haven’t been the most prolific attacking side to date, in fact, offensively, they’ve been one of the worst, but have still managed, despite poor underlying numbers, to find the net 8 times in their first 5 games. This might not matter too much on the weekend though, as only Fulham (12) have conceded more goals than Huddersfield (11) so far and if there’s 1 man who can take advantage of their poor defence, it’s Jamie Vardy.

The Captain Metric says…

… Sergio Agüero.

With our new ‘metric score’ in place, Agüero takes a close run thing down with a score of 10 to Hazard and Salah’s 8.

Breakdown:

Player form – Hazard has scored more points than either Salah or Agüero so far.

– Hazard has scored more points than either Salah or Agüero so far. Team form – Agüero’s Manchester City have created the most amount of big chances (21) in comparison to Liverpool and Chelsea.

– Agüero’s Manchester City have created the most amount of big chances (21) in comparison to Liverpool and Chelsea. Fixture difficulty – Hazard’s opponents (West Ham) have conceded the most amount of big chances (14) in comparison to Liverpool (Southampton) and City’s opponents (Cardiff).

– Hazard’s opponents (West Ham) have conceded the most amount of big chances (14) in comparison to Liverpool (Southampton) and City’s opponents (Cardiff). Likelihood of scoring – Agüero/Salah have the best chance of scoring according to the bookies odds.

– Agüero/Salah have the best chance of scoring according to the bookies odds. Expected goals/assists (xGI) – Salah has the highest expected goal involvement of the 3 candidates.

– Salah has the highest expected goal involvement of the 3 candidates. Actual goals/assists (xGI Delta) – Agüero is over performing to the highest degree of the 3 candidates.

Just to be clear, I included Mané in this week’s key candidates as people may look to captain a Liverpool player because of the fixture and I believe he is a solid candidate this week.

I did run the numbers on Mané in the metric but he lost with a score of 5, so I didn’t put him into the final cut as, if you want to captain a Liverpool player, then it really should be Salah, if you don’t own him anymore, then you should look at captaining Hazard or Agüero over Mané according to the relevant statistics in our metric.

My view

Okay, so I wrote this article on Tuesday afternoon, before any of the UCL matches.

Now that I have more information available, I’ve decided to re-write this section, as my view has changed based off the information coming from the UCL matches.

When I wrote this initially, we weren’t sure of the situation surrounding Agüero and whether he would be okay for the weekend, but he was in full training and was on the bench for last night’s game against Lyon, coming off the bench to play in the second half.

So we now know he’ll not only be okay to feature this weekend, but that he should start also.

The other bit of information we got, was in Liverpool’s UCL tie against PSG.

Mohamed Salah did not look himself and had a really poor game. He gave the ball away a lot and made poor decisions in the final third, as well as missing another golden chance. Incidentally it was his poor pass that led to PSG’s equaliser too.

This, along with the fact that we can’t know for sure if he starts, has really put me off him being my captain this weekend and as such, I think I’ll be going to what feels safer in choosing Sergio Agüero as my captain.

With more people jumping ship to Hazard and with others likely feeling similar to me after seeing his (Salah) performance, I don’t expect his captaincy % to be as high as it was going to be before that UCL game, and even if he does score big, I’ll simply be happy that he’s returning big points again and this will give me confidence in him going forward.

Whilst all of Agüero’s returns have come at home so far, I don’t expect Cardiff to pose too much of a threat in keeping City at bay and after losing their UCL tie, Pep will want a big reaction from his players.

I’m not advising that this week is a good week for a differential captain, but if you do fancy something different, then I really like the look of Alexandre Lacazette against a defensively weak Everton side.

Stats obtained from fantasyfootballscout.co.uk

Odds obtained from williamhill.com