Introducing our ‘Captometer’ ratings to assist with those captaincy dilemmas

Bonus points, clean sheets and more precise scoring actions can all play their part when assessing captaincy options, especially when double points are up for grabs from any of the Fantasy Premier League contests on offer.

However, it is invariably a combination of a player’s ‘goals and assists’ expectation that will determine whether he is afforded the honour of wearing the captain’s armband in your fantasy line-up.

If you are familiar with our game difficulty features, you will know that we use the latest English Premier League betting odds to accurately predict the number of goals each team is expected to score in any given gameweek.

Well, now we are delighted to take this one step further, by including the proportion of team goals a player is expected to contribute to (in terms of goals and assists) and have applied the powerful poisson distribution to produce a definitive guide for each round of Premier League games.

If a team is scheduled to play twice in a ‘double gameweek’, then this will also be factored into the calculations. The table will present readers with the likelihood of each weeks’ leading captaincy contenders contributing with 0, 1, 2 or 3 or more of their team’s projected total.

GW21 ‘Captometer’ Ratings

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Alexis Sánchez tops the ratings for GW21 but he does come with something of a red flag. The Chilean international started the season playing in the number 9 role and his overall contribution has since ‘rocketed’ when compared to previous seasons, dating back to his debut in August 2014.

However, Olivier Giroud’s recent resurgence has seen Sánchez switched to a left-sided attacking role.

The early indications suggest that Sánchez will not be able to retain the goals contribution rate he recorded in the first half of the season, especially with the Frenchman in such prolific form. Lucas Pérez is also pushing for a starting spot and his case was assessed in a recent WhoScored article, while Danny Welbeck is also back from injury, adding even more competition for those coveted places in the Arsenal attack.

Only time will tell but bearing all this in mind, Diego Costa might be the better captaincy option in GW21.