Captain options beyond Haaland

Haaland is the popular pick, and at 67.5% ownership he's close to a default armband for most squads. But running this site's own predicted-points model over the opening gameweeks turns up a more interesting picture than "just captain Haaland" - starting with the fact that he isn't actually the top-projected player right now.

The model's actual top pick

Bruno Fernandes (Man Utd, £12.0m) projects for the highest points of anyone in the game over the opening window, ahead of Haaland. He's owned by 43.2% of squads - high, but well short of a "everyone has him" pick, which makes him a genuinely different armband from Haaland rather than just a cheaper copy of the same decision. Between the two, this is closer to a coin flip than the ownership numbers suggest.

The real differential

Further down the list sits the more interesting name: Elliot Anderson (Man City, £6.5m) projects as the third-highest scorer in the model over the same window - at just 12.3% ownership. For context, that's roughly one in eight squads. A £6.5m midfielder projecting inside the model's top three isn't a small differential; captaining him and being right is the kind of week that actually moves a mini-league table, precisely because so few rivals are exposed to it.

He's not alone. Enzo Le Fée (Sunderland, £6.0m) and Marcus Tavernier (Bournemouth, £6.0m) both project well above their price at 3.3% and 2.0% ownership respectively - neither is an armband for a first XI built on safety, but both are worth knowing about if a mini-league rival has pulled ahead and a differential swing is the only way back.

How to actually use this

None of this is "ignore Haaland" - at 26.5 predicted points over the window he's still elite, and there's real value in not fighting the ownership tide when nothing forces you to. It's a case for treating the armband as a real decision rather than an automatic one, especially once a mini-league gap opens up and matching the field stops being the goal. The Differentials page tracks this exact trade-off - low-ownership, high-scoring players - all season, not just for Gameweek 1.

Predicted points and ownership figures pulled directly from this site's live model ahead of Gameweek 1.