Marcus Tavernier sat in 59.4% of the top 1,000 Fantasy Premier League squads for 2025/26. Across the other 13 million-plus teams in the game, he sat in just 4.2%. That is a 55.2-point ownership gap on Bawler's numbers — one of the widest of the season for a player anyone could have picked up for £5.3m. He finished the campaign with 137 points, a genuinely strong return for a midfielder in that price bracket. The question is not really about Tavernier's numbers. It is about why the best-performing managers in the game found them, and the rest of the field didn't.
Start with what kind of pick this actually is. At £5.3m, Tavernier was never sold as a season-defining differentiator the way a £10m forward might be. But 137 points at that price is not a squad-filler's tally either — it puts him among the better-returning midfielders in the game relative to cost. That distinction matters. A gap this size usually means one of two things: a cheap player bought purely to free up budget for someone else, or a genuine find the elite spotted before the price caught up. Tavernier's numbers point to the second.
The context is Bournemouth's forward line under Andoni Iraola. Tavernier is used across all three attacking midfield positions in Iraola's 4-2-3-1 — left, right or just behind the striker — which keeps him on the pitch even in weeks when he isn't the headline name. He played 2,732 minutes across the season, the sort of minutes count that belongs to a starter, not a squad option. For long spells that appearance total wasn't matched by goal involvements big enough to justify wide ownership on its own. What changed things was what happened around him.
Antoine Semenyo, Bournemouth's main attacking threat and the player directly responsible for close to three in ten of the club's Premier League goals this season, was sold to Manchester City in January. Justin Kluivert, another of the club's attacking options, picked up a serious injury around the same time. Iraola turned to Tavernier to fill both gaps — he inherited penalty-taking duties and became the closest like-for-like replacement for Semenyo's shot and chance-creation numbers. By the time he was hurt himself, a hamstring injury suffered against Brighton, he had seven goals and four assists for the season, output that had made him one of Bournemouth's most involved attackers.
That is the mechanism behind the 55.2-point gap. The top 1,000 managers track role signals closely — who a struggling side turns to when its main outlet leaves, who inherits penalties, who plays every week regardless of position — and they can act on that before it shows up as a headline stat. Most of the game was still oriented around Semenyo as Bournemouth's key attacking name, or simply hadn't clocked that a versatile, functional squad player at a mid-table club had become the man closest to first-choice status. Ownership sat at 4.2% throughout, and the price didn't rise on the back of any of it — it fell from £5.5m to £5.3m across the season.
One number tempers the story: only 0.1% of the top 1,000 gave Tavernier the captaincy. That is close to nobody, even among the 59.4% who owned him. The best managers used him as a reliable source of points inside the XI, not as a week-to-week armband pick. That fits a player with a real goal threat but no track record of the huge, single-gameweek hauls a captain needs — a contributor, not a focal point.
Where does that leave him now? Bawler's projection engine has him rated, not premium — 3.73 projected points per gameweek from a projected 73 minutes, with a 9.2% chance of a big haul in any given week against a 59.7% chance of blanking. That reflects a player still working back from the hamstring problem, in a Bournemouth attack reshuffled twice in one season — first by Semenyo's sale, then by the open question of exactly who plays where among Tavernier, David Brooks, Eli Junior Kroupi and Evanilson.
None of this tells you what happens next. The ownership gap is real, and it shows the top of the game acting on a role change before the rest of FPL did — that's worth knowing. It does not mean Tavernier repeats 137 points, and it does not mean the elite are automatically right to keep holding him now that Bournemouth's attacking picture is unsettled and the projection model itself rates a blank as far more likely than a haul in any single week. Treat it as evidence of what the best-informed managers noticed, not as a forecast of what comes next.