Elite Squads Before Gameweek 9: Top Transfers and Captains

João Pedro out, Nicolas Jackson in, Haaland captain. That was the dominant pattern among the top 1,000 FPL managers heading into Gameweek 9. The biggest transfer decision was up front; the armband barely divided opinion.

We checked all 1,000 squads in our GW9 deadline snapshot. These are this season's overall leaders, captured after the deadline but before kickoff, rather than a hand-picked group of managers with strong historical records. Here's who they bought, who they sold, and how the top two lined up.

Who did the top managers buy?

Nicolas Jackson was comfortably the most popular addition: 581 managers, almost two-thirds of the comparable sample, brought him into their squads. Marcus Tavernier was a distant second, followed by Evanilson.

For transfers, we compared the same managers' GW8 and GW9 squads. We excluded 28 current Wildcards, 68 current Free Hits and nine managers returning from a GW8 Free Hit. That leaves 895 managers; every transfer percentage below uses that denominator.

Player bought	Club	Managers	Share of 895
Nicolas Jackson	Aston Villa	581	64.9%
Marcus Tavernier	Bournemouth	134	15.0%
Evanilson	Bournemouth	115	12.8%
Jan Paul van Hecke	Tottenham	112	12.5%
Johan Manzambi	Aston Villa	100	11.2%
Silva	Bournemouth	67	7.5%
Alexander Isak	Liverpool	65	7.3%
Gabriel	Arsenal	25	2.8%

Bournemouth supplied three of the six most-bought players. But Jackson was the standout: more managers added him than the next four names combined.

Who did they sell?

João Pedro dominated the exits even more strongly than Jackson dominated the arrivals. 704 managers removed him, compared with 73 for the next most-sold player, Riccardo Calafiori.

Player sold	Club	Managers	Share of 895
João Pedro	Chelsea	704	78.7%
Riccardo Calafiori	Arsenal	73	8.2%
Rayan Cherki	Manchester City	50	5.6%
Thomas	Coventry	40	4.5%
Morgan Gibbs-White	Nottingham Forest	38	4.2%
Gonzalo	Fulham	37	4.1%
Lewis Hall	Newcastle	35	3.9%
King	Fulham	27	3.0%

The clearest route was João Pedro → Jackson. Among managers whose squads changed by exactly one player, 257 made that swap. Another 47 replaced João Pedro with Evanilson, and 13 with Isak. Those are directly observable one-player squad changes; we haven't guessed which sale funded which purchase in teams making several moves.

Only 50 of the 895 had identical player sets across the two deadlines. That doesn't prove they rolled a transfer: a player bought and sold again between snapshots would be invisible here.

Who did they captain?

The captaincy figures include all 1,000 managers, including chip users.

Captain	Managers	Share
Erling Haaland	933	93.3%
Nicolas Jackson	25	2.5%
Cole Palmer	15	1.5%
Morgan Rogers	8	0.8%
Evanilson	5	0.5%
Other captains	14	1.4%

Jackson was the big transfer, but Haaland remained the overwhelming captain. Just 67 managers went elsewhere. These are selected captains at the deadline, before any vice-captain takeovers or match results.

The world number one's GW9 squad

The manager ranked first in our snapshot, on 685 points, replaced João Pedro and Gonzalo with Jackson and Thierno Barry. They kept a 3-4-3, with Haaland captain and Palmer vice-captain, and no active chip.

Starting XI: Raya, Gabriel, O'Shea, Hall, Palmer (V), Rogers, Schade, Groß, Haaland (C), N.Jackson, Barry.

Bench: Forster, Konsa, Slater, De Cuyper.

Actual GW9 selection for entry 895045. C = captain, V = vice-captain. The bench shows the stored deadline order; no GW9 scores are shown.

The world number two's GW9 squad

The manager ranked second, on 661 points, made the most common one-player change: João Pedro out, Jackson in. Another 3-4-3, another Haaland captain, but Rogers takes the vice-captaincy. No chip here either.

Starting XI: Trafford, Calafiori, Gabriel, Tarkowski, Rudoni, Rogers (V), Ndiaye, Groß, Calvert-Lewin, N.Jackson, Haaland (C).

Bench: Raya, Schade, Hato, De Cuyper.

Actual GW9 selection for entry 52087. These are two individual squads, not a synthetic template or a recommended team.

The two leaders agreed on Jackson and the armband, while keeping quite different supporting casts. The transfer consensus was strong; it didn't produce identical XIs.

Use the FPL planner to compare these players with your own squad, or revisit our earlier breakdown of the world's number-one team.

About the data

Our scheduled collector froze the top-1,000 cohort at 11:08 UTC on 31 October 2026, after the 11:00 UTC GW9 deadline and before the first kickoff. Squad collection completed at 11:48 UTC. We analysed the stored production snapshot, with all 1,000 current and previous squads available.

“Bought” and “sold” mean players added or removed between the GW8 and GW9 deadline squads, after the chip exclusions above. They aren't a complete transfer history: intermediate moves are invisible, and Wildcard and Free Hit selections aren't counted as ordinary purchases. Managers can appear in several rows, so transfer percentages don't sum to 100%. Captain percentages do.

This is a record of decisions made for GW9, published after the deadline. It doesn't use GW9 results to select the managers or judge their choices, and being near the top after eight weeks doesn't establish long-term skill.