The FPL Template: The Players Almost Everyone Owns

The Crowd Is Sprinting to Brighton — And For Once, The Crowd Is Right

Nearly 700,000 managers bought Pascal Groß this week. That's not a stampede we need to fear — it's one we need to join. Our model has the Brighton midfielder as the single biggest points source in the entire template over the next six gameweeks, projecting around 64 points. At £5.8m, owned by almost 3 in 10, he's the rare pick that's both cheap and essential. If we don't own him, we're not being brave — we're leaving the shield on the ground.

He's not travelling alone. De Cuyper (£4.9m) is the second Brighton piece the crowd is grabbing — 240,000 in this week — and our projections back it: roughly 44 points over six gameweeks from a defender who costs less than a fiver. Almost 3 in 10 already have him. That's two Brighton slots we should be comfortable filling.

The obvious shield stays obvious. Haaland at £15.6m is in about 7 in 10 squads and projects the second-highest total in the XI, around 45 points over the run. We don't debate this one — he's the piece that hurts most when he hauls and we're not covered. Own him, and captain him more weeks than not.

Now the honest bit — the template piece it's safe to skip. João Pedro sits in roughly 6–7 in 10 teams at £7.7m, but our model projects just 12 points from him over the next six gameweeks. That's the lowest figure in the whole XI by a distance. When two-thirds of the game owns a player who's projected to blank his way through a month and a half, the smart move isn't to hold for safety — it's to be the ones who moved first. His teammate Rogers (£7.7m, same price) projects three times as many points. That swap funds itself.

The middle tier — Calafiori, Fernandes, Gvardiol, Cherki, Szoboszlai — is genuinely optional. Good players, decent numbers, but nothing there we lose sleep over missing. Cover what we can, don't take hits chasing all of them.

The call: own the big three shields — Haaland, Groß, De Cuyper. Groß is the priority transfer if he's missing; the price makes him painless. And sell João Pedro to Rogers before the crowd works out what we already know. Protect the rank first — then let the Brighton points do the climbing for us.