What the Top 100 FPL Managers Did Differently: The Elite Template After GW5

Five gameweeks in, the top 100 managers in the world average 435 points. The average manager has 299. That's a 136-point gap in five weeks.

I was curious how they did it. So I used Claude to create a script and pull every squad each of the current top 100 fielded in Gameweeks 1-5 from FPL's own API: 500 team-gameweeks, including starting XI, bench, captain, chip and transfers. The short version: they share a small core of five players, and got players who generated a lot of points.

In hindsight this is obvious, it's clear sign of survivor bias. Managers from top 100 are in top 100 because they picked players who performed best. Their squad does not guarantee success, does not predict success it is just reflection of which choices in past 5 game weeks resulted in success.

1. The elite template

This is the 15-man squad built from the players the top 100 own most, as of their permanent Gameweek 5 squads. It follows the game's rules: 2-5-5-3, no more than three players per club, and under the £100m budget. The points shown are each player's season total so far.

Position	Player (% of top 100 who own him)
GK	Raya (ARS £6.1m, 58%), Verbruggen (BHA £4.5m, 44%)
DEF	Calafiori (ARS £5.8m, 81%), De Cuyper (BHA £4.9m, 66%), Hall (NEW £5.3m, 41%), Gvardiol (MCI £5.7m, 38%), Konsa (ARS £4.6m, 34%)
MID	Groß (BHA £5.8m, 80%), Rogers (CHE £7.7m, 49%), Szoboszlai (LIV £7.0m, 31%), Schade (BRE £6.2m, 30%), Barnes (NEW £6.1m, 19%)
FWD	Haaland (MCI £15.6m, 87%), João Pedro (CHE £7.7m, 82%), Calvert-Lewin (LEE £6.0m, 32%)

It costs £99.0m. Just taking the most-owned player in every slot would cost £107.9m, because it would add Palmer (36%), Semenyo (31%) and Isak (36%). Elite team values have grown to about £101m, so most of them can afford one of those three, but not all of them.

Five players are close to essential: Haaland, João Pedro, Calafiori, Groß and De Cuyper. (João Pedro is currently injured, so most players are keeping him on the bench rather than selling.) After those five, the template falls apart quickly. The average top-100 squad shares only about 8 of these 15 players, and the least template-like share just 4. The top 10 aren't any more template-like than ranks 51-100.

2. Where elites differ from everyone else

Some players are owned far more by the top 100 than by the rest of the game:

• Groß: 80% of the top 100 vs 28% of all managers
• De Cuyper: 66% vs 27%
• Hall: 41% vs 17%
• Verbruggen: 44% vs 22%
• Schade: 30% vs 11%

Brighton is the elite club to own right now: the top 100 average 2.2 Brighton players per squad, level with Arsenal and ahead of Man City (1.9) and Chelsea (1.7).

Others are popular with most managers but mostly avoided by the top 100:

• Guéhi: 3% of the top 100 vs 18% of all managers
• B.Fernandes: 24% vs 39%
• Cherki: 15% vs 28%
• Gabriel: 13% vs 23%
• Van Dijk: 7% vs 16%

The Fernandes number is also the season's biggest change of mind. 90 of the top 100 started the season with him. 24 still own him. Mbeumo went from 66 to 17 owners. In the other direction, Haaland went from 40 to 87, and Hall and Konsa went from almost no owners to 41 and 34. On average, only about 8 of each elite manager's Gameweek 1 players are still in their squad.

The catch

This is today's top 100, and they're in the top 100 because their decisions worked. Plenty of managers bought Groß or De Cuyper early and are nowhere near the top. So read these patterns as "what the winners did so far", not "what guarantees success". The picks that worked are over-represented by definition.

Still, one thing holds up regardless: the top 100 were early on under-owned players like Groß and De Cuyper, before the rest of the game caught on. How much does your squad overlap with theirs? The Elite Ownership dashboard tracks what the top 100 own week to week.

Data pulled from the official FPL API (leagues-classic/314/standings/ and entry/{id}/event/{gw}/picks/ for each of the current top 100 managers, Gameweeks 1-5). Prices are current, and the top 100 is the list as of 23 September 2026.