Mohamed Salah appears to be as popular as is reasonably possible among elite FPL managers currently.
By analysing the movements of a group of 1,000 managers with multiple top-10,000 finishes to their names, we can find out what the best of the best do to prepare their sides.
With that in mind, these were the most popular squad members among our top bosses going into gameweek 17.
The most popular player among them, it will come as no surprise, is Salah, who has been owned by 990 of our sample for four consecutive gameweeks now.
With 15 goals and 10 assists in just 17 gameweeks, the Liverpool attacker hasn’t blanked since GW2 – the 10 top bosses who don’t own him are either not keeping an eye on their teams this season, or are conducting a strange Salah-less experiment.
Salah’s team mates Trent Alexander-Arnold and Diogo Jota also feature in our elite squad, with Trent the second most popular player among them.
The England right-back has the backing of more than 90 per cent of our sample, having dropped to 50 per cent popularity among them in GW7.
However, with two goals, seven assists and nine clean sheets, Trent is only the second player – after Salah – to reach 100 FPL points this term.
Jota, meanwhile, is backed by more than 80 per cent of our top managers and has already equalled his record PL goals tally with nine goals so far this season.
Liverpool’s title rivals Manchester City have two players in our squad – Bernardo Silva and Joao Cancelo.
Cancelo marked himself out as a reliable fixture in Pep Guardiola’s side early on in the season, and despite missing GW17 due to a suspension, his elite ownership only dipped by 15.
In midfield, Bernardo had a top ownership of just one for the first eight gameweeks of the season, but is now backed by more than 50 per cent of them.
With five goals and an assist in six gameweeks ahead of GW17, many will hope he can be to this year’s title charge what Ilkay Gundogan was last year.
Surprisingly, Watford boast more players in our elite squad than champions City: Ben Foster, Emmanuel Dennis and Joshua King.
King and Dennis are both owned by just under 50 per cent of our sample – at £5.8m and £5.9m they have 12 goals and nine assists between them this season.
Both were owned by less than 100 of our top managers until GW15, when their elite ownership took off into the hundreds.
Another side with more than one player in our elite team is Arsenal, whose young England stars Aaron Ramsdale and Emile Smith Rowe have caught the eye despite the team’s mixed season.
Ramsdale has marked himself out as one of the best stoppers in the league with eight clean sheets in 14 games, and is the second highest FPL points scorer among goalies this season.
The Arsenal keeper has made 52 saves according to the FPL, and has accrued an elite following of almost 50 per cent.
Smith Rowe, meanwhile, could be the bargain midfielder of the season – at £6m he has five goals in his last seven appearances and a sizeable backing among the cream of the crop.
Last but not least, West Ham’s Michail Antonio was owned by more than 95 per cent of our sample in GW3 after a sensational start to the campaign.
His ownership among them has since slipped to 64.3 per cent thanks to a miserable run which has seen him fail to score since GW9.
However, with other strikers failing to find the net regularly either, the £7.9m forward appears to still have the top bosses’ backing for now.
