Season review · 30 September 2026 · 6 min read
2026/27 after five gameweeks: what the numbers say
Five gameweeks is too early to judge anyone's season, but it's enough to see how eleven million managers have been playing it. Every figure here is from the game's own published data.
One captain, every week
Erling Haaland has been the most-captained player in all five gameweeks. He's owned by 73.8% of managers, the most of anyone, and his returns have been steady rather than spectacular: 2, 13, 9, 9 and 6 points, for 39 in all.
That first 2 is the week to remember. The most popular captain in the game blanked in gameweek 1, a week in which the average score was only 50. When most of the field shares a captain, his blank costs almost nobody rank. It's the managers who went elsewhere who gained or lost, depending on who they chose. Effective ownership explains why.
The Triple Captain rush
Gameweek 3 was the week the chips came out. Triple Captain was played 1,787,071 times that week, more than five times as often as in any other gameweek so far. Haaland was again the most-captained player, and he scored 9: 27 points for anyone who tripled him, a solid return but no more. Where managers made the same call, it moved them very little against each other.
A chip played on the same player as a large part of the field is a defensive move rather than an attacking one: it protects your rank against everyone who made the same choice, but it can't gain on them. Against those managers, gameweek 3 was decided by the other ten players.
The Wildcard followed the same week and the next: 709,478 played it in gameweek 3 and 760,682 in gameweek 4, as managers rebuilt after seeing a month of real football.
Big weeks and small ones
The average score has swung hard. Gameweek 2 averaged 81 points, the highest so far, and gameweek 4 averaged 69. Gameweeks 1, 3 and 5 averaged 50, 51 and 48. The best single score has been 161, in gameweek 2.
High-average weeks are the ones where the popular players all returned together, and they're the hardest weeks to gain rank in, because everyone gains at once. The low weeks are where rank moves most for the managers who got something right that the crowd didn't. Overall rank, gameweek rank and percentiles goes further into why.
The cheap players doing the work
The highest-scoring player after five weeks is Pascal Groß of Brighton, a £5.8m midfielder on 47 points, owned by 28.9% of managers. Three of the top ten cost £5.0m or less: Leeds defender Bogle on 42 points at £4.6m, Brighton defender De Cuyper on 38 at £5.0m, and Hull goalkeeper Tzolakis on 34 at £4.7m. Bogle is owned by only 7.2% of managers.
That's the kind of detail that separates squads early in a season. The money saved on a cheap defender who starts and scores is money that can go on a premium elsewhere; Building a squad covers the thinking.
What it means for your mini-league
In a mini-league, the questions are different from the overall game. You don't need to beat eleven million people, only the handful you know, and the players that matter are the ones your rivals don't have. If everyone in your league owns and captains the same striker, his weeks cancel out, and the league is being decided by the other ten players and the transfers.
Compare yourself with a rival to see where your head-to-head record actually came from, or read Playing the mini-league, not the world.