3 Best Captain Picks for FPL GW34 [Captaincy Index]

In this article, we will look at the best captain picks for Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 34 of the 2023/24 season.

If you are familiar with our captaincy decision-making process, we always pick a reliable player as our captain that has an easy fixture. We developed our captaincy index – a score that helps us to find the best captain picks for any gameweek.

So, if you are not sure who to captain in Gameweek 34, check our calculations for inspiration.

FPL Captain picks for Gameweek 34

We picked a range of players and calculated the captaincy index for them. You can check it in the table below. Players are sorted by the highest score in the captaincy index. The best captaincy picks in GW34 are at the top.

Name	Captaincy Index	Reliability Index	Goalscorer Odds	Form/25	1/oposition FDR	Is MID/10	Home/10
Salah	2.49	0.48	0.93	0.18	0.8	0.1	0
Saka	2.09	0.25	0.69	0.15	0.8	0.1	0.1
Eze	1.92	0.08	0.55	0.19	0.8	0.1	0.2
Odegaard	1.86	0.15	0.51	0.2	0.8	0.1	0.1
Diaz	1.84	0	0.69	0.25	0.8	0.1	0
Darwin	1.83	0.07	0.81	0.15	0.8	0	0
Jota	1.82	0.11	0.8	0.01	0.8	0.1	0
Jesus	1.72	0.13	0.61	0.08	0.8	0	0.1
Fernandes	1.71	0.33	0.34	0.34	0.5	0.1	0.1
Haaland	1.61	0.56	0.52	0.2	0.33	0	0
Cunha	1.58	0	0.49	0.35	0.54	0	0.2
Solanke	1.53	0	0.68	0.18	0.67	0	0
Martinelli	1.45	0.11	0.3	0.04	0.8	0.1	0.1
Rashford	1.39	0.2	0.41	0.08	0.5	0.1	0.1
Watkins	1.36	0.23	0.42	0.21	0.5	0	0
Hojlund	1.36	0	0.41	0.35	0.5	0	0.1
Mbeumo	1.35	0.17	0.36	0.12	0.5	0.1	0.1
Hwang	1.33	0	0.48	0.01	0.54	0.1	0.2
Isak	1.3	0.07	0.36	0.37	0.5	0	0
Toney	1.28	0.24	0.36	0.08	0.5	0	0.1
Bowen	1.25	0.25	0.24	0.16	0.5	0.1	0
De Bruyne	1.24	0.28	0.3	0.23	0.33	0.1	0
Palmer	1.17	0	0.21	0.66	0.2	0.1	0
Foden	1.13	0.18	0.29	0.23	0.33	0.1	0
Wissa	1.08	0.07	0.31	0.1	0.5	0	0.1
Morris	1.01	0	0.27	0.14	0.5	0	0.1
Gordon	1	0.02	0.2	0.28	0.5	0	0
Alvarez	0.8	0.08	0.3	0.09	0.33	0	0
Sterling	0.68	0.18	0.15	0.05	0.2	0.1	0
Joao Pedro	0.49	0	0.14	0.05	0.2	0	0.1

If you are more into the manual process of picking the best captain in FPL, check our article: How to pick a captain in FPL?

Best Gameweek 34 Captain

According to our captaincy index, Salah is the best captain in FPL Gameweek 34 with a captaincy index score of 2.49.

Saka (captaincy index score 2.09) is the number 2 captaincy pick and Eze (1.92) is number 3.

History of our captaincy picks

Gameweek	N1 Captain	Points	N2 Captain	Points	N3 Captain	Points
GW1	Haaland	13	Fernandes	3	Rashford	3
GW2	Haaland	2	Salah	5	Saka	3
GW3	Haaland	4	Mbeumo	2	Mitoma	1
GW4	Haaland	20	Salah	8	Mbeumo	8
GW5	Haaland	6	Salah	10	Son	2
GW6	Haaland	6	Salah	10	Fernandes	10
GW7	Haaland	2	Son	7	Salah	1
GW8	Son	3	Watkins	5	Salah	15
GW9	Salah	16	Son	14	Haaland	8
GW10	Salah	8	Watkins	2	Son	10
GW11	Haaland	1	Salah	2	Son	2
GW12	Salah	16	Son	2	Haaland	16
GW13	Haaland	7	Son	2	Salah	5
GW14	Salah	5	Haaland	7	Saka	8
GW15	Salah	3	Haaland	2	Son	2
GW16	Haaland (did not play)	0	Salah	13	Fernandes	1
GW17	Haaland (injury doubt)	0	Salah	3	Son	2
GW18	Son	7	Watkins	2	Salah	7
GW19	Salah	3	Haaland (injury doubt)	did not play	Saka	2
GW20	Son	9	Salah	16	Foden	12
GW21	Saka	3	Palmer	10	Sterling	6
GW22	De Bruyne	7	Jota	8	Bowen	2
GW23	Rashford	3	Fernandes	6	Sterling	2
GW24	Haaland	13	Jota	7	Foden	3
GW25	Haaland	10	Jota	4	Foden	5
GW26	Haaland	5	Saka	10	Watkins	9
GW27	Haaland	6	Saka	7	Son	7
GW28	Solanke	8	Bowen	2	Odegaard	2
GW29	Son	2	Bowen	2	Watkins	2
GW30	Son	10	Salah	7	Fernandes	2
GW31	Salah	1	Haaland	0	Son	2
GW32	Son	5	Palmer	5	Haaland	2
GW33	Haaland	10	Salah	2	Foden	0
GW34	Salah		Saka		Eze

Captaincy index explained

Fantasy Football Report’s Captaincy Index is a sum of six numbers. When looking at each individually, they cannot give us the full picture of whether a player is a good captaincy option or not. But when we combine them, we will get a better picture of the player’s captaincy potential.

Variables in Captaincy Index

• Goalscorer Odds – the probability that a player will score a goal according to a bookies odds. It is a different number for each match. We convert bookies odds into probabilities using our own Odds to Probability Calculator. (*if double gameweek, the sum of goalscoring odds for both matches)
• Reliability Index – this is a number that measures how reliable a player was in delivering stable output in his 3 previous Premier League seasons. It is calculated as (Average Amount of Total Points over the last three seasons – 76)/350
• Form – this is the form number from Official FPL stats
• Opposition FDR – Fixture Difficulty Ranking of opposition in current gameweek. (*if double gameweek, the average FDR for both matches)
• Is Midfielder – Boolean variable. If a player is midfielder, the number is 1. If not, it is 0. The idea behind this variable is that mids are usually scoring bigger hauls than forwards, as they earn more points for goals and clean sheets. We want our system to get a slight advantage to midfielders over forwards.
• Is Home – Boolean variable. If a player plays at home in the current gameweek, the number is 1. If not, it is 0. We want to our system to get slight advatage to players playing at home. (*if double gameweek, the sum for both matches)

Weights of variables

Each variable has its own weight according to its importance in our overall metric. Those weights are:

• Weight of Goalscorer Odds = 1
• Weight of Reliability = 1
• Weight of Form = 1/25
• Weight of opposition FDR = 1/(FDR*FDR) (*if double gameweek FDR = 2/(FDR*FDR))
• Weight of Is Midfielder = 1/10
• Weight of Is Home = 1/10  (*if double gameweek = IsHome1/10 + IsHome2/10))

The formula for captaincy index calculation

Then, the captaincy index is calculated as sum of variables multiplied by their weights:

Captaincy Index = (Goalscored Odss + Reliability Index + 1/25 * Form + 1/FDR + 1/10 * Is Midfielder + 1/10 * Is Home)*(Player’s availability in FPL)