By the Gameweek 3 deadline, Alexander Isak sat in 79.1% of the squads belonging to the top 992 managers in the Overall Fantasy Premier League rankings - the elite sample Bawler reads every night, comparing what the best-ranked managers own against ownership across the whole game. Among everyone else, only 18.9% of squads owned him. That is a 60.2-point gap between the two groups, one of the widest currently in the game.
At £9m, Isak is not a cheap pick bought to sit quietly and free up budget for players elsewhere. He is a genuine premium forward, and 23 points already this season shows he is contributing on the pitch too. A gap this size in a player at this price means the best managers found real conviction in him early, rather than using him as a way to save money.
The wider game's caution is easy to explain: last season was a write-off. Isak joined Liverpool on transfer deadline day, 1 September 2025, in a British transfer record £125m move from Newcastle, following a months-long and public saga in which he refused to play for his old club and said in a statement that "the relationship can't continue." He arrived at Anfield without a proper pre-season and was playing catch-up from day one. Then it got worse. He broke his leg before Christmas, an injury that kept him out for around four months, and just as he found his feet again, a groin injury in May ended his season early. He finished his debut year with four goals in 22 appearances. "It was not easy," Isak said afterwards. "It was a long injury, a difficult season in general." That is the season most of the FPL game still remembers, and it is a fair reason to think twice about spending £9m on him again.
The top managers appear to have moved past it for a specific reason: this time, Isak has had a full pre-season. Arne Slot left Liverpool in May 2026 after a fifth-place finish, and Andoni Iraola came in as his replacement. Isak arrived for the new campaign fit, and by Gameweek 3 he looked it - a brace inside the first nine minutes of a 2-0 win at Ipswich took him to three goals in three league games. Iraola's comments afterwards were pointed: "if he is fit, if he is available, if he is in good shape, I think he will produce the numbers." That is a new manager naming him first-choice in public, and the elite sample looks to have acted on it before the rest of the game caught up.
They have not fully committed, though. Only 6% of that same elite sample gave Isak the captain's armband in Gameweek 3, despite the 79.1% ownership. Owning a player and trusting him to lead your gameweek are different calls, and the gap between those two numbers suggests the best managers wanted his goal threat in the squad without yet building a whole gameweek around him.
Bawler's projection engine points to the same caution. It has Isak down for 5.16 points per gameweek on average, built from a projected 75 minutes rather than a full 90 - in keeping with Iraola substituting him at the hour mark against Ipswich, with a Champions League match against Atletico Madrid four days later. The engine's own tier for him is "thin": a 15.0% chance of a big haul in any given week, against a 68.0% chance of blanking. That is a player capable of a big return but more likely, on the numbers, to not get one.
Put together, this looks like a case of role clarity beating history for the managers paying closest attention. The elite read a fit, first-choice striker under a new manager who had already produced an explosive return, and decided that was worth building around even at £9m. The rest of the game, still carrying the memory of a lost season, has been slower to follow - or has decided the blank risk the projection engine flags is too big a downside to accept on a player at this price.
None of this promises anything about the rest of the season. Isak's injury history - a broken leg that cost him four months, then a groin problem that ended his year early - is real, and the same data that shows the elite backing him also shows their own model expects more blank weeks than big ones. Heavy ownership among the best managers is worth weighing, not a guarantee, and the fact that only 6% trusted him with the captaincy in Gameweek 3 suggests even they see him, for now, as a squad player to build around rather than a certainty to lean a whole gameweek on.