FPL Gameweek 5 Review: What Went Right And Wrong — 9 Oct

GW5 Post-Mortem: The Week the Little Guys Hauled

Antoine Semenyo scored 17 points — against Manchester City, of all teams — while the crowd strapped the armband on Haaland at the other end. About 7 in 10 of us captained the big man. The best captain of the week was owned by barely 1.5 in 10. That's the whole gameweek in one sentence.

The average manager came away with 48 points, while the week's top score hit 126 — and that gap was built almost entirely on hauls nobody owned. Brobbey banged 17 for Sunderland with roughly 1 in 10 managers aboard. Dasilva (15 for Coventry) and Schuster (14 for Brentford) are owned by basically nobody — call it fewer than 1 in 100. If you had one of those, your rank took the lift of the season. If you didn't — and we didn't — you weren't alone, and that matters more than it feels like right now.

Because here's the calm bit: the template did its job. Groß's 14 points kept about 3 in 10 of us level. Tarkowski's 14 protected nearly 2 in 10. Hall's 13 did the same for almost 2 in 10 Newcastle backers. Owning what everyone owns isn't a failure — it's a seatbelt. The managers who got hurt this week weren't the ones holding Groß; they were the ones missing him.

Now, the temptation. Dasilva, Schuster, Manzambi — three names most of us couldn't pick out of a lineup, three hauls that will tug at your transfer finger all week. We've seen this film. One big week from a sub-1-in-100 punt is exactly how good teams get dismantled. Semenyo is the only one of the bunch with real pedigree and meaningful ownership behind him, and even then, chasing last week's points is how we buy the haul we already missed.

The captaincy call on Haaland wasn't wrong, either. Seven in 10 of us made it, and when 7 in 10 make the same call, a miss costs almost nothing in rank. That's the maths of safety, and it worked — we all missed Semenyo together.

The call: hold. No hits, no panic punts on Dasilva or Schuster. If you own Groß, Tarkowski or Hall, protect them — they're the picks quietly keeping our rank afloat. The best move before the next deadline is the one we don't make.