Bawler read the squads of the top 441 managers in the Fantasy Premier League rankings after the Gameweek 4 deadline, then set what they own, bought, sold and captained against the game as a whole. This sample averaged 101 points for the gameweek, well clear of the 69-point average posted across the wider game. They made 0.91 transfers each on average, and only 2% paid the four-point penalty for an extra transfer — the squads near the top were built up over several gameweeks, not patched together this week.
The most interesting number here is the closest one: how the sample split the captaincy. 45.6% of the top managers gave the armband to Cole Palmer for Chelsea's home match with promoted Hull City. 40.4% gave it to his strike partner João Pedro instead. Add Erling Haaland, new signing Morgan Rogers, Alexander Isak and Bukayo Saka, and those six players carried 99% of the sample's captaincy picks between them.
The bigger group's pick had the quieter day. João Pedro scored, set up another goal and picked up maximum bonus points as Chelsea drew 2-2 with Hull; Palmer managed only an assist. Our data measures this as "share of this gameweek's scoring" — the slice of all the points the sample scored in Gameweek 4 alone that ran through one player, counted double for anyone who captained him. João Pedro's owners took 146% of that share; Palmer's took 117%. Both are high because both players are owned almost everywhere in this bracket, but the gap shows the larger armband group had the worse of it.
The buying had one standout. Morgan Rogers was bought by 59.2% of the sample in the week after his £117m move from Aston Villa, the most expensive transfer of a British player in the competition's history. He is now owned by 65.3% of the top bracket against 37.8% of the whole player base, a 27.5-point gap — though almost nobody trusted him with the armband yet, at just 2.3%, which is normal for a player new to a squad. Arsenal's defence gave the next-clearest signal: Ezri Konsa was bought by 37.4% of the sample after his £55m move from Aston Villa, brought in to cover long-term injuries to William Saliba and Jurrien Timber. At £4.5m he is the cheapest way into the champions' back line, owned by 41.7% of the top bracket against 18.1% of the whole game.
Two Brighton picks carried the widest ownership gaps of anyone bought this week. Pascal Groß, bought by 24.9% of the sample, was the top scorer of the entire gameweek — a goal, two assists and bonus points in a 5-1 win over Coventry City — and has created more chances than anyone else in the competition so far. He sits on 70.3% ownership among the top managers against 19% of the whole game, a 51.3-point gap. Team-mate Maxim De Cuyper, bought by 20.9%, has delivered an attacking return in four matches out of four playing as an out-of-position left winger, and carries a 41.7-point gap of his own.
Newcastle and Liverpool's swap from last year is still shaping squads. Alexander Isak, now at Liverpool after last year's British transfer record move, was bought by 16.8% of the sample — then blanked in a goalless draw at home to Fulham, a reminder that a transfer is a decision made before kick-off, not a guarantee of anything after it. Yoane Wissa, signed by Newcastle as his replacement, was bought by 17.2% of the sample this week but is still owned by less of the top bracket (13.6%) than of the whole game (18.2%).
The selling pointed at one club. Bryan Mbeumo was sold by 40.1% of the sample, the heaviest sell of anyone, with Bruno Fernandes next on 33.6% and Harry Maguire on 16.8% — all three Manchester United players moved out before a home meeting with Manchester City. Fernandes had scored a hat-trick against Ipswich earlier in the season but had otherwise gone quiet, and United had already lost at Hull and needed a stoppage-time leveller at Everton before the derby. United failed to score against City on the day, a result that landed after the sales had already gone through, not before them. At the other end of that match, Haaland, captained by 7.5% of the sample, scored again and took 77.1% of the gameweek's scoring share for his owners.
Chip use was heavy for a Gameweek 4: the wildcard went down 110 times (24.9% of the sample) and the triple captain 78 times (17.7%), some of those presumably aimed at the Chelsea captaincy question above. Bench boost was played 27 times (6.1%) and free hit 16 times (3.6%) — together, more than half the sample played some chip this week.
None of this previews Gameweek 5. It is a record of what the best-performing 441 managers did by the most recent deadline — who they added, who they dropped, and the two names they split the armband between. A player bought by six in ten of this sample is a strong signal that the sharpest end of the game rates him. It is not a guarantee he repeats the trick, as Isak's blank this week shows.