Gameweek 4 closes at 12:30pm on 12 September, and Bawler's projected-points model has produced a headline finding: Erling Haaland edges the race for top score, but only just. Alexander Isak sits within 0.14 points of him, and the ownership numbers around that gap are the real story of the week.
Haaland projects for 5.17 points, the highest of any player, and is owned by 71.1% of the entire game. Among Bawler's top-manager sample — the squads of the best-ranked players in the game, read every night — that ownership climbs to 98.6%, and 95.8% of those managers are captaining him. Haaland has scored in every Manchester City match so far under new boss Enzo Maresca, most recently heading in the winner against Coventry, and next travels to Manchester United. This is about as close to the default captaincy pick as the data gets.
Isak is the more interesting number. He projects for 5.03 points, second-best on the board, yet is owned by only 17.4% of all managers against 91.7% of Bawler's top sample — a 74.3-percentage-point gap, the widest anywhere in this week's data. The best-ranked managers in the game are backing Isak far more heavily than the wider FPL public. Curiously, they are not captaining him: just 2.7% hand him the armband, still deferring to Haaland. Isak also carries Bawler's "thin" tier tag rather than "rated", meaning the model is working from a smaller sample for him than for most names here, so treat his number with a touch more caution.
Three more Liverpool players sit inside the model's top eight: Szoboszlai (4.87 points, owned by 40.5%), Wirtz (4.66, owned by just 9.2%) and Gakpo (4.48, owned by 10.3%). Liverpool are at home to Fulham on 12 September, which explains the cluster. Wirtz and Gakpo, both under 11% owned, are this week's clearest route into Liverpool's attack without paying Isak's price or joining Haaland's crowd.
The outlier in that group is Gibbs-White, who projects for 4.52 points — third-highest of anyone — despite Nottingham Forest travelling to Aston Villa rather than enjoying a kind fixture. He picked up an ankle knock in Forest's opening-day defeat by Leeds and was left out of the Carabao Cup tie that followed, but the club have since confirmed he is fit and available. At 9.4% owned, he is the standout non-Liverpool differential this week, though an away trip is a real reason to want the team sheet confirmed before kick-off rather than trusting the projection alone.
Leeds supply four names across the model's differential and value lists: Calvert-Lewin (4.45 points, 25.5% owned), Stach (4.4, 2.9%), Justin (4.35, 1.5%) and Bogle (3.87, 0.7%). Newly promoted Leeds host Newcastle at Elland Road, and Stach in particular has been picking up the game's defensive-contribution points — the bonus for a high tackle-and-interception count — on top of attacking returns. Justin, at £4.5m, projects higher than every other defender in this data and is owned by fewer than two in every hundred managers.
The wider value list leans on cheap defenders: Mitchell (Crystal Palace, £4.5m, 3.57 points, 4.9% owned), Ballard (Sunderland, £5m, 3.71, 3.9%) and Maatsen (Aston Villa, £4.5m, 3.35, 0.8%) all project comfortably above their price. De Cuyper is the standout of the group. Bawler's top sample own the Brighton defender at 82.3% against just 17.9% of the whole game — a 64.4-point gap, the second-widest in this week's data behind Isak's. His Brighton teammate Mitoma is one of this week's price fallers, which hints that the best-ranked managers currently rate Brighton's defence above their attack.
Not every gap in the elite sample is a clean signal, and it is worth being honest about that. Thiago is owned by 55.4% of Bawler's top managers against 13.1% of the whole game — a 42.3-point gap — yet has just 4 points from Brentford's first three matches. Heavy backing from the best managers in the game is evidence worth weighing, not proof a player is about to deliver. Cherki is a similar watch: he nearly scored against Coventry, striking the post, and is one of this week's price risers, but he does not feature among Bawler's top eight projections for Gameweek 4, and reports had linked him with a bench role before that Coventry match before he started anyway. The team sheet matters more than the price tag.
Elsewhere in the price data, Barry, Cherki and Wissa are this week's risers, while Arrizabalaga, Meslier, Hincapie, Rice, O.Dango and Mitoma are all edging down. That reflects the whole game's transfer activity, not the projections — price and projected points are two different signals.
None of this tells anyone what to do with their team. It shows where Bawler's numbers and the game's ownership currently disagree, and where the best-ranked managers are positioned differently to everyone else. Haaland remains the highest-projected and most heavily captained player in the game. Isak, Wirtz and the Leeds cluster are where the model sees more points than current ownership reflects. The deadline is 12:30pm on 12 September.