We explore the best options for the Fantasy Premier League captain for Gameweek 1 and reveal the results of our captain poll and our new 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 ‘FPL Captain Metric’, which explains the concept fully and it can be viewed here >> https://fplconnect.blog/2018/08/07/the-captain-metric-explained-2/

Premiums proved to us in GW1, just exactly why we pay premium! Because, largely speaking, they go big when we expect them to.

Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang all delivered for us, with 3 out of the 4 returning double-figure hauls, including an excellent hat-trick from Raheem Sterling in City’s 5-0 romp of West Ham at the London stadium.

Moving ahead to GW2 and we can expect it to be one way traffic again given Burnley’s 3-0 win over Southampton, showcasing their defensive frailties with the masses all thinking in unison; “Well if Burnley can put 3 past them, then Liverpool will surely put 12 past them with their attacking talent!”.

But despite City’s tougher fixture (on paper), Raheem Sterling should definitely not be ignored, as Aston Villa demonstrated that Spurs can be got at and Man City, when they hit top gear, can put a lot of goals past anyone.

In addition to this, Aubameyang faces Burnley in Arsenal’s first game at the Emirates in the 19/20 season and after a nicely taken goal to kick off his campaign, he’ll be looking to add to his tally after scoring 33 in his first 50 PL games.

Results of our poll

Mohamed Salah – 73% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats:

11 penalty area touches.

2 total goal attempts.

2 goal attempts inside the box.

1 big chances.

1 goal.

1 assist.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – 12% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats:

7 penalty area touches

4 total goal attempts.

4 goal attempts inside the box.

1 big chances.

1 goal.

0 assists.

Raheem Sterling – 11% of the votes

Underlying attacking stats:

7 penalty area touches

4 total goal attempts.

4 goal attempts inside the box.

3 big chances.

3 goals.

0 assists.

Differential captain options

Roberto Firmino – Bobby Firmino got off to a typically average start at home to Norwich with an assist, a game (if you owned him), in which you would expect him to do better however, there was much to be encouraged by with his performance. Only Harry Kane took more shots (8) than the Brazilian number 9 (4) and out of the forwards, only Kane had more penalty area touches (12) than Firmino (7). With Southampton up next for The Reds, a team that have just shipped 3 goals to Burnley, Bobby Firmino could be a solid differential captain option.

Gylfi Sigurdsson – A bit of an outside of the box pick considering a lacklustre 0-0 draw against Palace for Everton’s first outing this season, but if you watched the game, Sigurdsson, on another day, could have easily been in the points. Sigurdsson took 4 shots in the game, with 2 being in the area and 1 of them being a big chance set up by left back Lucas Digne. With a poor looking Watford up next in their first home game of the season, I’d expect him to pick up points.

My view

After such strong performances from Liverpool and Manchester City in GW1 in the goalscoring department, I really can’t make a case for going anywhere other than these two for the captaincy.

Mohamed Salah put in a typical performance at home against the Canaries, buzzing about on that right side getting into the penalty area as often as he could, the only, perhaps surprising thing, was that he only took 2 shots in the game where you’d maybe expect him to shoot with a little more frequency, as we’ve often seen him do.

But in spite of this, Salah was able to reward his owners with a solid 12pt score after scoring and assisting Van Dijk from his corner, giving him 2 bonus points.

The only case you could potentially make for not captaining Salah, would be that Liverpool have a demanding European Super Cup final to play against Chelsea tonight and that could have an affect on Liverpool’s overall mental and physical sharpness for their match against Southampton on Saturday at 15:00 GMT.

Man City and Raheem Sterling, do not have this to contend with, so will likely be fresher of mind and body in preparation for their revenge match against Spurs, who knocked them out of the UCL semi-final last year in dramatic fashion!

I was watching the Spurs-Villa game and both Spurs full backs, Danny Rose in particular, got caught out of position quite often. Fortunately for him and Spurs, it didn’t accumulate in chances created, but Spurs did concede 3 chances from Kyle Walker-Peters’ side, where Raheem will play.

Now obviously, against City, Spurs won’t be that expansive and won’t push their full backs as high every single time they attack, but it’s the lapse in concentration that both Danny Rose and Kyle Walker-Peters displayed in that first match that makes me think that Raheem and whoever is operating on the other flank, could have a field day against them.

I expect both Salah and Sterling to be in the points this weekend, so both are great options, but for me, I think not overthinking it and going with Mohamed Salah against weaker opposition is the way to go.

Captain Metric

Because our metric is based on previous Gameweek data, we don’t have access to all the stats we need to complete it.

We also want to base the stats for it on this season rather than last season to reflect the most relevant statistics, so we’ll be starting this section in GW5.

Stats obtained from fantasyfootballscout.co.uk