At the Gameweek 2 deadline this season, 38.2% of the top 997 Fantasy Premier League squads — the elite bracket Bawler tracks every night — owned Brighton's Maxim De Cuyper. Across the rest of the game's roughly 13 million teams, that figure was 16.3%. The gap between the two, 21.9 percentage points, is one of the widest of the season so far for a player priced at just £4.7m. It raises an obvious question: what did the best managers see that most of the game didn't?
Start with what kind of pick this is. At £4.7m, De Cuyper is priced like a squad defender — the sort of player bought purely to free up budget for someone more expensive. But his season points tell a different story. Through two gameweeks he already had 17 points on the board, a total that puts him among the highest-scoring defenders in the game at that price. This isn't a nothing player bought for nothing. It's a cheap player doing an expensive one's job.
The explanation is Gameweek 1. Brighton beat Aston Villa 4-0, and De Cuyper — nominally a left-back — lined up on the left wing. He scored a goal, claimed an assist, kept a clean sheet and picked up two bonus points. All 17 of his season points arrived in that single match. Manager Fabian Hurzeler had pushed him forward because Yankuba Minteh, Brighton's first-choice left winger, had been ruled out with a leg injury expected to keep him out for months. De Cuyper, a summer signing from Club Brugge bought as full-back cover, ended up filling the more advanced role instead.
What separates the top managers from the field is when they acted. Reports of De Cuyper's shift to the wing were public from the middle of August, before a ball had been kicked in Gameweek 1, once Hurzeler confirmed Minteh's injury and began using the Belgian out wide in the closing days of pre-season. Managers reading Brighton's team news closely had a window to buy him at a defender's price before he had a single Premier League attacking return to his name. Most of the game's 13 million teams didn't move until after the Villa scoreline was in — by which point his price had already started to climb.
That pattern held into Gameweek 2. De Cuyper blanked away at Chelsea — his season points stayed at 17, meaning the trip added nothing — yet top-sample ownership still reached 38.2% by that deadline. The best managers weren't only chasing one big score. They were backing the role to keep going, with Brighton's next two fixtures, against Leeds and Coventry, looking friendlier than a trip to Stamford Bridge.
One number complicates the picture. Not a single top manager gave De Cuyper the captain's armband in Gameweek 2. Even among the managers most convinced by his role, nobody trusted a player still classified as a defender over their premium forwards and midfielders with the armband. The conviction here is about squad value and where cheap returns can be found — not about him being a captaincy option.
Bawler's projection engine, which sits alongside the ownership data, currently rates De Cuyper as "rated" tier and projects 4.35 points per gameweek from 71 minutes on the pitch — short of a full match, reflecting some doubt about how long he stays on before being withdrawn or rotated. It puts his chance of a big scoring gameweek, a haul, at 11.4%, and his chance of blanking entirely at 53.1%. In plain terms: on these numbers there's roughly a one-in-nine shot of another explosive week, but more than half the time the model expects nothing at all.
None of this guarantees anything about the rest of the season. De Cuyper's wing role exists because Minteh, and fellow winger Kaoru Mitoma, are both out — sidelined for months, not the season — and if either returns fit, Hurzeler could easily send De Cuyper back to left-back, where the attacking returns dry up. The ownership gap shows the best managers spotted a role change early and backed it before most of the game reacted. It doesn't tell you the role survives to Christmas, and a 53.1% blank chance is a reminder this is still a boom-or-bust pick even now.