Bruno Fernandes is projected to score more points than anyone else in Gameweek 2. Bawler's model has him at 6.15 projected points, the highest figure in the gameweek, with Manchester United teammate Bryan Mbeumo second on 5.48. Both play newly promoted Ipswich Town at home, the kind of fixture that inflates both a model's numbers and a manager's confidence: 48.5% of the entire game already own Fernandes and 36% own Mbeumo.
Neither man features in Bawler's elite template, though — the list of players who most separate the squads of the best-ranked managers from everyone else's. That isn't top managers turning away from Manchester United's front two. It's that there's no gap left to find: when a player is already owned by roughly half the game, elite and casual squads are simply agreeing with each other. The interesting signals sit further down the ownership numbers, where the best managers have gone somewhere the crowd hasn't.
The clearest case is Cole Palmer. He's projected third on 4.91 points, but the ownership picture around him is the standout number in this week's data: 57.5% of Bawler's elite sample own him against 15.3% of the whole game, a 42.2-point gap, the widest in Bawler's elite-template sample this week. Palmer pulled up with what looked like a muscular issue late in Chelsea's 3-2 win at Fulham and was withdrawn in injury time; Xabi Alonso said afterwards it wasn't a new problem and hinted it was cramp. Given Palmer lost most of three months last season to a groin injury, that's worth watching before trusting the projection blind.
João Pedro is projected fourth on 4.55 points but tops the armband count: 31.4% of Bawler's elite sample captained him, more than any other player in the template. He's already owned by 97.2% of the best-ranked squads against 67.6% of the whole game — a 29.6-point gap — and his price has ticked up to £7.6m, one of six risers across the game this week. For a forward the model doesn't rate as the outright top scorer, that's a striking show of confidence from the managers with the best track record.
Erling Haaland is the more interesting disagreement. He doesn't appear among Bawler's top eight projected scorers for Gameweek 2 at all, yet 20.4% of the elite sample still gave him the captaincy — second only to João Pedro. The ownership numbers hint at why some are cooling: elite squads own him at 47.8%, actually below the 68% ownership across the whole game, a rare negative gap. Manchester City's trip to a Crystal Palace side that won the Conference League in May is a tougher assignment than Haaland's price tag suggests, and he's managed only two points so far this season.
Further down, Virgil van Dijk and Alexander Isak share the model's joint-fifth-highest projection at 4.41 points each, with Isak flagged 'thin' — Bawler's tag for a projection built on less data. Isak is expected to start as Liverpool host Nottingham Forest, and by his own account is finally up to full match fitness after a stop-start summer, having played his first 90 minutes for the club last week. That's genuine progress, but it's still a short track record at a new club, and the 'thin' tag is a fair reason to trust this particular number a little less than the others on this list.
The clearest value sits with two promoted clubs. Leeds and Sunderland both won and kept clean sheets on the opening weekend — the first time two promoted sides have managed that double on an opening weekend — and both go again in kind fixtures: Leeds host Brentford with an unchanged side expected, Sunderland host Fulham. That underpins a cluster of budget defenders, priced at £4.5m-£5m, projected inside the model's top dozen scorers: Leeds' James Justin (4.06 points, 1.1% owned) won more tackles than anyone in the league on the opening weekend, with Jaka Bijol (4.12) and Joe Rodon (3.98) close behind; Sunderland's Dan Ballard (4.29, 5.1% owned) and goalkeeper Robin Roefs (4.25) are cheap and lightly owned for the numbers attached to them.
Crystal Palace's Richards (4.24) and Canvot (4.05) carry similar projections but face the toughest match of the gameweek for a clean sheet: freshly crowned Conference League winners themselves, Palace host Manchester City in Gameweek 2, a stiffer task than the fixtures facing Leeds or Sunderland. In goal, Manchester United's Senne Lammens (4.22, 15.6% owned) looks to have taken the gloves ahead of Altay Bayindir and gets a kinder fixture at home to Ipswich. None of this is a guarantee — projected points describe a range of likely outcomes, not a promise — but the gap between what elite managers own and what everyone else owns is exactly the kind of signal that's hard to find anywhere else.