Greetings, and welcome back for another round of FPL captaincy debate, the most important decision of your gameweek.
Let me first extend an apology for not having a column ahead of Gameweek 9. Turns out, the plethora of injury flags in the game extended to content creators like myself. I have had a Raphinha-like week: considered unavailable one day, good to go the next, and then back to questionable again. However, I did offer up a sample-sized version of the column over on our official Twitter account. Take a moment to see where things stood heading into last weekend with this summary. Consider it a shameless plug to follow us there for updates.
Right, so this will almost certainly stand as the most informal version of Captain Obvious in its existence. If you look back at my last full version of the column in Week 8, I said things were becoming difficult for my job, as the task of sizing up and presenting the pros and cons of every promising option was becoming silly, when one looks at how brilliant Mo Salah has been. It was the Manchester City match in Week 7 that sealed the deal for me. His goal in that game told you everything you need to know - we are watching a top player in the world in peak form. How could you bet against him for the armband? All he as done in the two games since my pre-Week 8 claim is reinforce the notion that he needs to be captained indefinitely until a significant reason to do otherwise comes along.
So now, as I have done my routine rounds on social media this week, it is not surprising to see the entire community getting behind the idea of going with Salah as their “perma-captain”. To this I say: nothing is ever permanent. Here is my official position on Salah - assuming he stays fit, he has earned the right to be given the armband for three straight gameweeks, no questions asked. It does not matter who he is playing, it does not matter which other player in the league is matched up against Norwich, my feeling is, Salah is entitled to give me three straight blanks. Only then, heading into a fourth game after three blanks, am I even going to entertain the idea of another captain. My feeling is, if he goes that long without a goal involvement, then something is wrong with him - physically, mentally...whatever the case may be. But right now, he is a man among boys in this league, period. When someone dominates a sport, be it football, basketball, baseball, golf...whatever, you know it when you see it. It is as if they were given some kind of cheat mode in a video game. Those of you old enough to remember Tecmo Bowl on Nintendo, Salah is pulling a Bo Jackson right now.
This is why I cannot in good faith present the column in the usual way at the moment. Yes, there are players who I have mentioned several times in the captaincy discussion who are fit this week, in some kind of form and playing a decent fixture. I could delve into all kinds of statistics to either encourage or discourage a player’s chances of coming good in a given week. For instance, I tend to look back at history versus opponent, particularly if there have been several games in which to get a sense of what to maybe expect, and I already know heading into this weekend that Jamie Vardy, who is the joint-top scoring forward in FPL right now, has a fantastic record against Arsenal, who he gets in the early Saturday kickoff. In thirteen previous matchups with the Gunners, Vardy has scored a whopping eleven goals, his best goal rate against any opponent. That is precisely the kind of stat I would throw at you to make a case for Vardy as captain this weekend, but I am here to tell you right now...these things simply do not matter.
Let me address the potential argument about Salah not being the only player worth giving the armband to. One could rationalize that, hey, picking the best captain is the best way to gain ground in the ranks and, if you are only going to captain the same player everyone else is...then you can only tread water. To this I would say - keep treading. I know the itch is there to want to go against the grain, perhaps attempting to outsmart the masses. To that I would say - you can accomplish that by transferring in a player with low ownership that you believe in. While there may be a bit of a template in defense right now - where Trent Alexander-Arnold, a Manchester City defender and a Chelsea defender seem to be essential as a steady supply of points, there really is no attacking player who is a “must own” besides Salah. Ronaldo was thought to be after his opening game. Lukaku was thought to be ahead of Chelsea’s current fixture run (to be fair, if fit, perhaps he would have been, but he wasn’t exactly in good form before his injury).
Nope, I am not buying it for anyone else in the game right now. So, if you want to find ways to climb the ranks, my advice, for now, would be to do it in any way you can that does not involve captaining a different player than Salah. He had already burned the millions of people who did not even have him rostered (by the way, as of this writing, his rostered percentage has hit an FPL-all-time-high of just under 70%), and last weekend, when people wanted to try and exploit an easy fixture, thinking Salah could have a quiet one at Old Trafford, they too felt the sting. Its like getting shocked putting your finger in a socket. After one electrocution, you probably have learned not to try that again. All this being said, I will add my standard terms and conditions line...
At the end of the day, captain who you want to captain. If you feel like giving Salah the armband is giving into some sort of peer pressure, and you really have a belief in someone else, hey, you are a sentient being with free will and this game is for you to get whatever enjoyment out of it you want. The growth of popularity with FPL over the years has been a great thing to see and be a part of, but I do feel a sense across social media that now, more than ever, a “herd mentality” can come into play and control your decision-making. Certain people can anoint a particular player as being “the one to have right now” and it becomes gospel. Naturally, when said player comes good, there is a collective pat of each other’s back. However, when said player winds up being a bust, it is sort of forgotten about without mention. I suppose it is the nature of punditry, but just as general advice - social media and herd-mentality-thinking has proven to be a rather dubious couple.
This is all to say that, my firm stance on Salah is just that, a stance. It is my best advice. I am not a fan of having only one sensible choice every week, it could make this column pretty stale for the time-being, but as long as Salah keeps dazzling us with his displays game after game, then I cannot complain. This situation does not come around often and it will not last forever. Even when Luis Suárez or Sergio Agüero were at their respective peaks, even though there was literally a phrase coined, “Always Captain Aguero”, it feels like there was always at least one other player who could compete for the armband when those players were at their best. And someday, there will be a challenger for the armband, but for now, we are in a holding pattern and Salah is our captain. Sit back, and enjoy the auto-pilot for a little while.
Good luck this weekend and may your arrows be green.
