The various Fantasy Football games have been open up to a week now, FPL a couple of days. Let's look at which player's ownership is on the up and whose been given a wide berth. We know it's early days but the you'd bet managers to have submitted a team already will be those keenest and experience.
Forwards
Folks are not too put off by his price tag it seems as £14m Van Persie, selected in 33% of teams.
Next up is Sturridge, selected by 22%. Suarez's 6 game ban and possible Anfield exit certainly have favoured the young striker's price and he's going to be an early favourite at £9m. He's certainly in our draft team.
Following on from these two, who are stand out leaders in ownership presently, come:
Lambert (19%), Benteke (17%), Bony (28%) and Anelka (16%). and Aguero (15%).
Anelka leads the way for £6m or less strikers. No-one else stands out at all.
Not so hot are players like Jelavic (3%), Giroud (4%), Torres (3%) and Rooney (2%).
Midfielders
Gareth Bale claims the early crown for most owned, selected in 50% of teams. Boom.
With half the popularity but second favourite is Hazard (25%), followed by closely by Coutinho (21%), Walcott (18%) and Mata (17%).
Paulinho comes as a surprise next selected by 16%, as perhaps does Snodgrass at 14%. Last season's top mids Michu and Fellaini come in at 12% and 10% respectively. Chelsea new boy Schurrle (4%) is not so hot but City's Navas (7%) is much more fancied who eclipse's an overlooked David Silva (6%)
From the bargain basement, Southampton's Wanyama priced at £5m looks to be a key enabler in 12% of teams. Other cheap mids to catch people's eye are Colback (£4.5m) and Bellamy (£5,5m).
Defence
Baines, Zabaleta and Mertesacker, three of last year's top defenders, are the most owned so far this season, all selected pretty equally by 21-22% of FPL managers.
Baker at a basement £4.0m is selected by almost as many with ownership of 19%, certainly a bench player in the eyes of many, but not a bad shout at that price.
Other popular names are Luiz (18%), Ivanovic (15%), and Glen Johnson, Jagielka and Vertonghen (all 14%).
Two players well fancied for rotation if not regular spots in your team are Norwich's Garrido and Southampton's Clyne, both £4.5m and 13% of managers already recognising their potential.
Our defensive hot pick Seamus Coleman is relatively unselected at the moment, in just 7% of teams.
Goalkeepers
The absence of any United defender's above is explained by David De Gea's position as the most fancied goalkeeper at this point with 18%, although just ahead of Artur Boruc's 15%.
Begovic (14%), Mignolet (12%), Hart (10%) and Jaaskelainen (9%) are the other top-scoring keepers from last year who hold leading ownership numbers this time too.
Interestingly, Southampton's reserve 'keeper Davis is 4th most selected in 13% of teams and rather surprisingly Cech is only in 9% right now.
Not fancied are Howard and Ruddy (4%), the latter would prove a good pick.
***********************************************************************
Although it's early days we think this is already starting to show worthwhile patterns in people's choice of players. We'll take another look at the ownership numbers in a couple weeks time to see how it's changing and how any new signings shake things up.
