It cannot last of course but, for this week at least, the MeanReversionMachine Index is doing what it set out to at the start of the season. Which is nice. After veering wildly off the road in Gameweek 1, we are back to having a first eleven made up of the most-owned goalkeeper, pair of strikers and quartets of defenders and midfielders in the game – supplemented by a cheap but strongly-owned player in each position.
The final piece of the jigsaw was Arsenal defensive mainstay Gabriel, who comes in for the originally well-owned but now anomalous Konsa. Some might argue this comes a week late, given Gabriel’s last-gasp goal last Sunday, which magicked a prospective four points into 13 – but that would be to misunderstand the aim of the index, which solely, objectively and, thus not always rewardingly, reflects the actions of the crowd.
To be fair, said crowd will also have been hungrily eying up the inviting menu of Arsenal fixtures that now sprawls out almost unbroken to Christmas and beyond – and will likely see more of the club’s assets making their way into our index. Even now, at 26.5%, Raya is the second most owned goalkeeper and Gyokeres is the third most owned striker but, as things stand, the MeanReversionMachine Index looks like this:
“If Haaland maintains anything even vaguely like the underlying stats of his start to the season, we can soon unthinkingly captain him – much like everyone else.
Source: Fantasy Premier League
As for how the pre-Gabriel portfolio translated into performance last week, the answer is, with qualified success – the unfortunate qualification being that index rules dictate we captain the game’s highest-owned player. That has not been a huge handicap in the past but, when many will not have thought twice about captaining or even triple-captaining Haaland, this was not the week to have the armband on a crocked Joao Pedro – as you can see:
Still, this may not be an issue for very much longer, given the City striker’s ownership has now quadrupled since the start of the season while the market’s interest in Pedro seems to be waning regardless of Chelsea’s own imminent run of attractive fixtures. If Haaland maintains anything even vaguely like the underlying stats of his start to the season, MeanReversionMachine can soon unthinkingly captain him – much like everyone else.
As you will see from our final charts, the 800,000-odd players who finally moved for Haaland this week, will be hoping for a similar immediate payback to the scores of 16 and 9 enjoyed by the 1.2m or so FPL managers, who brought him in over the last two weeks. To be fair, with scores of 13, just the two (versus Spurs), 9 and another 13, there has not really been a bad time to buy the Norwegian Nvidia.
Indeed – much to the detriment of my own Schadenfreude (which I guess may at least serve to boost the Schadenfreude of others) – momentum does appear to have been paying off this season. Along with Haaland, Bournemouth’s Semenyo and Crystal Palace captain Mark Guehi are the poster-boys here – apparently unable to stop scoring for their ever-growing legions of owners.
More positively – at least for the long-term prospects of this column – short-term evidence that bandwagon-jumping may not be best FPL strategy after all can be glimpsed in the purchases of the likes of Grealish, van der Ven and the re-injured Palmer. On the flipside, after being so, well, ‘mean’ to him, it only seems fair to celebrate MeanReversionMachine regular Ollie Watkins scoring at the sixth time of asking. Chris Wood next, perhaps? And, who know, one day even Florian Wirtz …
Source: Fantasy Premier League
