FPL analysis
Every piece here starts from a number rather than an opinion. Bawler reads the squads of the top managers in the Overall rankings, runs its own projected-points model, and rebuilds the price and fixture data daily. Right now — before the 2026/27 season kicks off — these are data studies of the completed 2025/26 season: what the sharp end of the game did, and what it means for the opening squads. In-season pieces take over from Gameweek 1. Each article shows the figures it was written from.
13 pieces, newest first. Rebuilt nightly.
Bawler's elite-ownership data shows the country's best FPL managers backed Dominic Calvert-Lewin months before the rest of the game caught on, and almost never gave him the armband.
A shock January return to Brighton turned a forgotten 5.6m midfielder into the most one-sided ownership split of the season among the game's best managers.
A 26.6-point gap between the top of the game and everyone else on Bukayo Saka comes down to three separate injuries - and what Arsenal look like without him.
Bournemouth's £4.2m defender sat in half the best Fantasy Premier League squads this season and barely one in fourteen of everyone else's — the gap comes down to a role change and a scoring mechanic the wider game was slow to price in.
Arsenal's defender scored more points than almost anyone in the game this season, and the best Fantasy managers backed him from early — while nearly half the game did not.
Almost every elite FPL squad carried Bruno Fernandes last season while barely half the game did — the numbers, and Manchester United's turbulent year, explain why.
Bournemouth's makeshift creative outlet was scoring for FPL's best managers long before the rest of the game noticed his role had changed.
Bruno Fernandes united almost everyone, but the widest gaps between FPL's elite and the rest reveal where the season was actually won.
Bawler's nightly read of elite squads shows the Brighton goalkeeper was one of last season's widest ownership splits — backed by the best while the rest of the game stayed away.
Brighton's £4.7m centre-back quietly had a defender's season most FPL managers missed entirely — here is the mechanism behind the 60.6-point gap.
Darlow was in 72.1% of the top 1000's squads by the end of last season and only 6.9% of the whole game's — a 65.2-point gap that comes down to timing and cost, not goal threat.
A £5.3m Manchester City defender scored 160 points and became one of last season's biggest ownership splits between the elite and everyone else — here's the mechanism, and what it doesn't guarantee.
Bawler samples the top of the Overall Fantasy Premier League league every night and counts what those managers own, captain and transfer, then sets it against ownership across all thirteen million squads. That comparison is the starting point for most of what you will read here — it is data the official game does not publish and that has to be assembled one squad at a time.
Each article carries the figures it was built on and links the sources it used. The live versions of the underlying data are always on the elite-ownership tracker, projected points and price changes.