Six days to the opening deadline. We looked at two numbers side by side today: our AI rating, and how many managers actually own each player. The gap between them is wider than we expected.
The crowd is standing in one place
Erling Haaland is in 73.4 per cent of squads. João Pedro is in 55.9. Bruno Fernandes 48, Dominik Szoboszlai 42.6. That is normal before a season starts — people pick the names they know, and there is nothing foolish about it. Our model rates all four highly: Bruno 90, Haaland and Szoboszlai 89, João Pedro 87.
The problem is that right next to them, in the same top tier of our rankings, sit players with almost identical ratings that almost nobody owns.
The highest-rated player that nine in ten managers do not have
Harry Wilson (Leeds, £6.5m) is rated 89 — exactly the same as Haaland and Szoboszlai. Ownership: 7.8 per cent. He costs nine million less than Haaland and sits in one squad out of thirteen. In GW1 he travels to Nottingham.
Enzo Fernández (Chelsea, £7.0m), rated 88, owned by 5.6 per cent — the lowest figure in the entire top tier. There was a concrete reason: a move to Manchester City hung over him all week. That has just been settled — City did not bid before the deadline, Chelsea closed the door, and the player stays. The uncertainty is gone; the ownership figure has not caught up yet.
Elliot Anderson (Manchester City, £6.5m), rated 88, owned by 11 per cent. City’s record signing opens at home to Bournemouth and costs about as much as a mid-range defender.
Morgan Gibbs-White (Nottingham Forest, £8.0m), rated 88, owned by 11.6 per cent, opens at home.
A separate case is Bruno Guimarães (Arsenal, £7.0m), rated 86, owned by 10.3 per cent. His move from Newcastle has already landed in the game, but most managers have not looked at him yet.
Deep water: under four per cent
If you want something genuinely nobody owns, the model points at four players:
- Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (Everton, £6.5m) — rated 87, owned by 3.7%
- Cody Gakpo (Liverpool, £7.0m) — rated 86, owned by 3.3%
- Ryan Gravenberch (Liverpool, £6.0m) — rated 85, owned by 2.0%
- Anton Stach (Leeds, £6.0m) — rated 86, owned by 1.1%
One manager in ninety owns Stach. That is the kind of pick that either changes nothing at all, or moves you hundreds of thousands of places in a single gameweek.
There is room to save at the back too
The same mechanism applies in defence. Marcos Senesi (Tottenham, £6.0m) is rated 87 at 10.1 per cent ownership, and Jan Paul van Hecke (Tottenham, £5.0m) is rated 85 at 8.6 per cent. At five million there is barely a better-rated defender in the game, as we set out in our piece on the cheapest enablers.
This is not an argument for playing against the crowd
Here is the part many guides skip. High ownership does not mean a bad pick. Haaland is rated 89 and is worth his price. Bruno Fernandes and Antoine Semenyo are both rated 90 and are the only two Strong Buy verdicts in the entire game. Owning them is not a mistake; it is sound.
The point is different. In FPL you are not racing points — you are racing other managers. When Haaland scores twice, you gain exactly what three quarters of the league gains, which in practice is nothing. When a five per cent player scores, you move ahead of everyone else. That is why a sensible squad is a core of reliable picks plus one, two, at most three of these — not eleven outcasts.
Before you click confirm
Three things worth remembering over the next six days.
The transfer window is open until 1 September, which is later than the first gameweek. Several squads are still changing shape, and it is normal for some picks to age badly within a fortnight.
The model does not know the starting elevens. A rating speaks to a player’s quality and his fixtures, but before the opening weekend nobody — us included — knows for certain who starts. With cheap players that is a real risk.
Prices are locked until the deadline, so there is no rush. You have until Friday 21 August, 6:30pm UK time.
The full list is in the AI rankings, a ready-made XI is in the recommended squad, and if you want to know where these ratings come from, we explain it in the methodology.
All figures come from our own rating engine and reflect the position on 15 August 2026. This article was produced with the support of AI tools. Fantasy PL Edge is not affiliated with the Premier League or the Fantasy Premier League game.